Last Updated: June 27, 2007
US History
US History
SOUTHERN PRO-UNIONISTS DURING THE CIVIL WAR
Margaret Storey, DePaul University
November 3, 2006
In this seminar, we will explore the complex and contradictory place of the South's white unionists, men and women who remained loyal to the Union after the South's secession in 1861. Of central concern will be understanding the ways that unionism varied across the region, as well as the ways that loyal Southerners understood their national identity and honor; coped with life on the Confederate homefront; interacted with and aided the Union army as soldiers, guerrillas, and spies; and collaborated with resisting free blacks and slaves. We will read short secondary literature about the topic, as well as a selection of primary source documents written by unionists.
US History/Politics, Econmics, and Geography (PEG)
THE CREATION OF MILLENIUM PARK
Tim Gilfoyle, Loyola University
November 7, 2006
Upon opening on July 16, 2004, Chicago’s Millennium Park was hailed as one of the most important millennium projects in the world. The project was born out of civic idealism, raised in political controversy, and matured into a new symbol of Chicago. The combined park, outdoor art museum, and cultural center was built and financed by an alliance of municipal government, global corporations, private foundations, and wealthy civic leaders. For some, Millennium Park epitomized not only the benefits of public and private cooperation in a civic project, but a new kind of cultural philanthropy. For Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, the new park embodied the intersecting relationship between municipal politics and urban culture. Daley insisted that culture—visual art, literature, music, architecture—was a primary agent of personal expression and social cohesion, saying “Politicians come and go; business leaders come and go, but artists really define a city.” This seminar will address the ways culture, economics, and urban politics intertwined to shape this newest Chicago landmark.
World Literature
SALMAN RUSHDIE'S SHALIMAR THE CLOWN: LOVE AND TERROR IN PARADISE
Harveen Mann, Loyola University
November 8, 2006
One of the leading contemporary writers, Salman Rushdie is perhaps best known for the controversy surrounding his portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad in his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, and the resultant fatwa by the Iranian government calling for the author’s death. Seventeen years later, and changed but undaunted by his many years in hiding, Rushdie traverses familiar terrain in his 2005 novel, Shalimar the Clown. The rise of religious fundamentalism, the despoiling of the “Paradise” of Kashmir, the modern-day geopolitical role of the United States, and the interconnectedness of the world are set alongside an examination of one of the most pressing subjects in contemporary times—the making of the global terrorist. As the Rushdiesque narrator announces, “Everywhere was now a part of everywhere else. Russia, America, London, Kashmir. Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another’s, were no longer our own, individual, discrete. . . .The world was no longer calm.” It is this engagement with the most divisive political questions of the day that leads at least one reviewer to declare that while Rushdie “may be too controversial to win the Nobel Prize anytime soon . . . he is too powerful not to read right now.” Taking its cue from the latter observation, this seminar will explore the politics and aesthetics of Rushdie’s latest story of love and terror, which is set in pre-World War II Strasbourg, post-Partition Kashmir, and modern-day Los Angeles. We will also read selected essays from Rushdie’s 2002 collection of nonfiction, Step across this Line, as we consider the wider role of writing in a post-9/11 world.
US History
OF SPIES AND SPIN: COLD WAR POLITICS AND COMMUNIST ESPIONAGE
David Krugler, University of Wisconsin-Platteville
November 10, 2006
It is well-known that Senator Joe McCarthy's infamous list did not identify a single communist in the State Department, even though for years dozens of American agents had passed on sensitive, classified documents to Soviet handlers. However, almost all of this espionage occurred before McCarthy announced his list in February 1950, and the ensuing Red Scare smeared far more innocent people than it uncovered real spies. Why? This seminar reviews scholarship detailing the extent of communist espionage in the United States and explores the reasons that most spies went undetected. At the same time, participants investigate how Cold War-era Democrats and Republicans often reduced the complex issues surrounding communist espionage to simplistic, partisan terms.
World History
THE AZTECS: WRITING WITHOUT WORDS
Ellen Baird, University of Illinois at Chicago
November 17, 2006
Aztec books were written without words: the texts conveyed religious, historical, and divinatory knowledge not with words but with pictures. Events, actions, dates, names, and ideas were all conveyed through pictograms (the pictorial representation of ideas, things, or actions such as house, tree, or movement); ideograms (the representation of larger concepts such as town, year, day); and logograms (word-based images). Although the Spanish invaders introduced alphabetic writing, Aztec pictographic writing continued in the century after the conquest and beyond. In this seminar, we will study the pictorial texts in the current Newberry exhibit “The Aztecs and the Making of Colonial Mexico” and investigate the ways in which they continued to be made after the conquest, and how they constructed memory, identity and meaning for the indigenous communities in which they were made.
Library Science
SHAKESPEARE IN THE LIBRARY
Jill Gage, Newberry Library
December 1, 2006
This seminar will focus on Newberry resources that can be integrated into the teaching of Shakespeare. We will discuss a variety of secondary sources and examine a range of the Newberry Library's particularly rich collections on Shakespeare and the Shakespearean age, including early printed editions of the plays and poems as well as manuscripts, prompt books, music, theater programs, maps, illustrations, and adaptations from the sixteenth century to the present day.
Library Science
SHAKESPEARE IN THE LIBRARY
Jill Gage, Newberry Library
December 4, 2006
This seminar will focus on Newberry resources that can be integrated into the teaching of Shakespeare. We will discuss a variety of secondary sources and examine a range of the Newberry Library's particularly rich collections on Shakespeare and the Shakespearean age, including early printed editions of the plays and poems as well as manuscripts, prompt books, music, theater programs, maps, illustrations, and adaptations from the sixteenth century to the present day.
Politics, Economics, and Government (PEG)
STATE OF THE ECONOMY
Mark Witte, Northwestern University
December 5, 2006
There has been much discussion of the solvency of the Social Security program, but its future finances are much sounder than are those of the fiscal position of the US government as a whole. Mark Witte of Northwestern University will work through his baseline forecasting models of government spending and tax collections and look at the implications for future deficit and debt levels—and the likely policy responses—for the US economy.
US History/World History
MAKING SENSE OF THE VIETNAM WARS:
VIETNAMESE, AMERICAN, AND INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
Mark Bradley, Northwestern University
December 6, 2006
“Why Vietnam?” The question dominated American political life for much of the length of the Vietnam Wars. It has continued to be asked in the three decades since they ended. The question, then and now, implied a desire not just for an answer but also for a justification. For most Americans the question centered on the U.S. itself, and for many the simplest answer that both explained and justified was “the Cold War.” Such an answer, of course, begged the question but beyond that it made invisible the Vietnamese presence in the war: how northerners and southerners, men and women, soldiers and civilians, urban elites and rural peasants, radicals and conservatives in Vietnam came to understand the thirty years war as it unfolded around them. This session will explore the new ways in which historians are approaching the wars for Vietnam --not just as American Cold War history but but also as Vietnamese history and as a part of the global historical processes of imperialism and decolonization in the twentieth century-- and consider the implications of the return of a popular revisionist history that seeks to legitimate the American wars in both Vietnam and Iraq.
World History
THE AZTECS: WRITING WITHOUT WORDS
Ellen Baird, University of Illinois at Chicago
December 8, 2006
Aztec books were written without words: the texts conveyed religious, historical, and divinatory knowledge not with words but with pictures. Events, actions, dates, names, and ideas were all conveyed through pictograms (the pictorial representation of ideas, things, or actions such as house, tree, or movement); ideograms (the representation of larger concepts such as town, year, day); and logograms (word-based images). Although the Spanish invaders introduced alphabetic writing, Aztec pictographic writing continued in the century after the conquest and beyond. In this seminar, we will study the pictorial texts in the current Newberry exhibit “The Aztecs and the Making of Colonial Mexico” and investigate the ways in which they continued to be made after the conquest, and how they constructed memory, identity and meaning for the indigenous communities in which they were made.
US History
CHICAGO AND THE GREAT MIGRATION
Jim Grossman, Newberry Library
January 19, 2007
This seminar will examine "The Great Migration" as a critical juncture in American history that reshaped black America, American cities, and the South. It will focus on the reasons why blacks looked to Chicago to find new patterns of work, leisure, community life, and race relations. Participants will also discuss the ways in which the newcomers were able to adjust to the new industrial and ethnic tensions in Chicago.
Politics, Economics, and Government (PEG)
RECAPPING THE 2006 ELECTIONS
Alan Gitelson, Loyola University
January 23, 2007
The seminar will review and summarize the outcomes and implications of the 2006 elections, focusing on an interactive discussion. While we will cover a broad number of topics (including both the congressional and Illinois state elections), special focus will be paid to (1) the youth vote; (2) the role of the media; and (3) campaign spending in 2006. Finally, in a seminar atmosphere, we will discuss the implications of the 2006 election on the 2008 presidential and congressional races and how discussions on the 2008 races can be generated in the classroom.
US History
ANTI-FEDERALISM AND REFORM MOVEMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
Robert Johnston, University of Illinois at Chicago
January 31, 2007
Most of us are well aware of the role that the Anti-Federalists played in the debate over the US Constitution. And though they failed to prevent the ratification of the Consitution, their ideas were never completely expunged from American politics. This seminar will explore the Anti-Federalists, who are often written out of our past as irrelevant losers, and the ways their ideas--which are important to include in our classrooms and in our current civic debates--have had a surprisingly durable and powerful impact upon American politics, especially reform movements. We will also look at the ways Anti-Federalist ideas have invigorated a variety of different movements that envision much more populist kinds of political systems, ranging from Progressive Era direct democracy to FDR's court packing scheme to current efforts to rethink the American electoral system.
US History
PUBLIC HOUSING IN CHICAGO HISTORY
Brad Hunt, Roosevelt University
February 1, 2007
Chicago has been tearing down its large public housing projects since 2000, but much of the history of the Chicago Housing Authority is shrouded in myth. Many have forgotten that public housing in this city once worked quite well, providing a ladder of upward mobility for low-income African Americans. Conversely, Mayor Richard J. Daley's role in building Chicago's high-rise projects has been widely misunderstood. This seminar will explore the history of public housing in Chicago and will wrestle with both the good intentions and the misguided policy choices that shaped the program. Fundamental questions include: What went wrong? What contexts influenced public housing's rise and fall? And what does the public housing experience teach us about providing housing for the poor?
US History
CHICAGO AND THE GREAT MIGRATION
Jim Grossman, Newberry Library
February 6, 2007
This seminar will examine “The Great Migration” as a critical juncture in American history that reshaped black America, American cities, and the South. It will focus on the reasons why blacks looked to Chicago to find new patterns of work, leisure, community life, and race relations. Participants will also discuss the ways in which the newcomers were able to adjust to the new industrial and ethnic tensions in Chicago.
US History
TERMINATION AND RELOCATION AS AMERICAN HISTORY
Laurie Arnold, Newberry Library
February 7, 2007
This seminar will examine the political, economic, and cultural forces behind the policies of Native American termination and relocation. You will remember that the Eisenhower adminstration passed termination legislation in an attempt to "equalize" Native Americans and turn them into "true American citizens." Instead, termination wreaked cultural and financial ruin on terminated communities, as well as undermined Native American political power throughout the United States. While both policies emerged in the 1950s, they represent simply a continuation of earlier assimiliationist policies. Why did termination and relocation seem like reasonable solutions to the "Indian problem" in the 1950s, and how much did the post-war ethos play a role in their legislation?
US History
THE LOST HISTORY OF AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE
Lisa Tetrault, Carnegie Mellon Univesity
February 12, 2007
When you teach U.S. women’s rights, where do you begin? And what stories do you tell? Many people (if not most) tell the story of Seneca Falls, which is the standard narrative, along with some account of the life of Susan B. Anthony (and maybe of Elizabeth Cady Stanton). The 1848 Seneca Falls convention was, so far as we know, the first women’s right convention in the United States. But it does not necessarily follow that this convention began a movement-or that it gave definition to a movement. So where did the Seneca Falls story come from? How does it affect our beliefs about women’s rights more generally? And does it matter? These will be our central questions. The answers to the origins, effects, and importance of Seneca Falls may surprise you-unraveling the standard narratives and leaving us with fascinating and more promising histories to tell.
US Literature
NELSON ALGREN AND POST-INDUSTRIAL CHICAGO:
TRANSITIONAL SPACES IN THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM
Bill Savage, Northwestern University
February 13, 2007
Nelson Algren’s masterpiece, The Man with the Golden Arm, winner of the first National Book Award in 1950, is set in the Polish-American ghetto that is now trendy Wicker Park. The novel depicts the decline of the urban industrial ethnic village, and the downfall of its eponymous hero, Frankie Machine. In this seminar, we will closely examine the setting of the novel, of the key spaces where actions define people and their fate, to help us better understand Algren’s sense of Chicago’s post-war transformations and the power of the city to shape the people who live in it.
Geography
MAPS, HISTORY, AND CULTURE
Jim Akerman, Newberry Library
February 14, 2007
We are accustomed to thinking of maps as simple tools that tell us how to get from one place to another or where some distant country or mountain range is. It is true that on the simplest level maps depict the geography-the general physical description and spatial organization-of our planet (as well, increasingly, of other planets and heavenly bodies). But the content of maps is as much determined by culture, historical circumstances, and the ideas and interests of mapmakers and map users as it is by the geography that maps attempt to depict. This seminar will explore how the study of antiquarian and contemporary mapping can support greater understanding of the cultural and historical circumstances that produced them. Our focus in this seminar will be world maps and what they tell us about the worldviews of the people that produced and used them, including an introduction to the wealth of historic maps in the Newberry Library’s collections.
US History
LOUIS SULLIVAN’S ARCHITECTURE IN CHICAGO
Diane Dillon, Newberry Library
February 15, 2007
Louis Sullivan’s pioneering Chicago buildings are widely regarded as milestones of American architecture. Modernist historians have celebrated his development of a distinctive form appropriate to the skyscraper, by referring to its interior metal frame on the exterior of the building. Observers in the architect’s own day, however, were often more impressed by Sullivan’s dazzling ornamentation than by the expression of his maxim that “form follows function.” In this seminar we will examine both dimensions of Sullivan’s work through a close analysis of his major Chicago landmarks, including the Auditorium Building and the Carson Pirie Scott store. We will also study the visual style and construction techniques of the buildings in conjunction with their historic, economic, and social significance.
US History
OF SPIES AND SPIN: COLD WAR POLITICS AND COMMUNIST ESPIONAGE
David Krugler, University of Wisconsin- Platteville
February 16, 2007
It is well-known that Senator Joe McCarthy's infamous list did not identify a single communist in the State Department, even though for years dozens of American agents had passed on sensitive, classified documents to Soviet handlers. However, almost all of this espionage occurred before McCarthy announced his list in February 1950, and the ensuing Red Scare smeared far more innocent people than it uncovered real spies. Why? This seminar reviews scholarship detailing the extent of communist espionage in the United States and explores the reasons that most spies went undetected. At the same time, participants investigate how Cold War-era Democrats and Republicans often reduced the complex issues surrounding communist espionage to simplistic, partisan terms.
US Literature
DUSTING OFF WILLIAM FAULKNER'S THE SOUND OF THE FURY
David Krause, Columbia College Chicago
February 21, 2007
In his Preface to the second Norton Critical Edition (1994) of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (1929), David Minter writes: “In the process by which a work like The Sound and the Fury begins as a puzzling text and becomes an established classic, there is loss as well as gain, particularly if we assume that we have succeeded in domesticating its radical newness.” And Faulkner himself, in his own introduction to The Sound and the Fury (written in 1933, but unpublished until 1972), expressed deep anxieties about the process by which an innovative, radical, and subversive text “becomes an established classic,” safe for libraries. How, then, should we read The Sound and the Fury in 2007? More importantly, WHY should we read it? What might we learn about twenty-first century realities if we can shake 78 years of dust off of Faulkner's novel and confront its “radical newness” and disorderly uncertainties? This seminar not only welcomes both new and returning readers of Faulkner's “puzzling” and “classic” text, but will focus explicitly on what we might have to learn from each other through a communal process of discovering and constructing meaning.
English Literature
JANE AUSTEN, RADICAL?
Mary Finn, Northwestern University
February 27, 2007
Reading Jane Austen's novels is such a great pleasure, one might miss how much they reveal about early the British legal system (primogeniture, laws governing divorce and marriage); class structures and tensions (rank vs. money vs. meritocracy); gender roles and ruts; mating rituals (the ideology of "first love"), just to name a very few. During this workshop we will first set up and explore historical and cultural contexts for Austen's novels. Then we will turn to literary issues, including Austen's famous use of indirect first person, the novels as satire, as comedy (that is, ending in marriage between the right people), as comical (that is, VERY funny), etc. To have something fresh to discuss, participants should read the unpublished "Lady Susan" and "The Waltons."
US History/World History
MAKING SENSE OF THE VIETNAM WARS:
VIETNAMESE, AMERICAN, AND INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
Mark Bradley, Northwestern University
March 2, 2007
“Why Vietnam?” The question dominated American political life for much of the length of the Vietnam Wars. It has continued to be asked in the three decades since they ended. The question, then and now, implied a desire not just for an answer but also for a justification. For most Americans the question centered on the U.S. itself, and for many the simplest answer that both explained and justified was “the Cold War.” Such an answer, of course, begged the question but beyond that it made invisible the Vietnamese presence in the war: how northerners and southerners, men and women, soldiers and civilians, urban elites and rural peasants, radicals and conservatives in Vietnam came to understand the thirty years war as it unfolded around them. This session will explore the new ways in which historians are approaching the wars for Vietnam --not just as American Cold War history but but also as Vietnamese history and as a part of the global historical processes of imperialism and decolonization in the twentieth century-- and consider the implications of the return of a popular revisionist history that seeks to legitimate the American wars in both Vietnam and Iraq.
European History
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND THE DEATH OF GOD:
DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPEAN THOUGHT IN THE MODERN AGE
Peter Fritzsche, University of Illinois
March 5, 2007
This seminar will focus on the significance of Nietzsche in late 19th century European history and philosophy; including his distinction between good and bad and good and evil, his view of history, his guide to life in a democratic society, and the belief in god.
Geography/US History
CHICAGO HISTORY THROUGH MAPS
Ann Durkin Keating, North Central College
March 9, 2007
This seminar will explore both historical maps and maps created to illustrate historical processes, drawing on the historical map collections of the Newberry library and the maps created for the Encyclopedia of Chicago. Particular emphasis will be placed on transportation, economic development, planning, demography and religion over the course of Chicago’s history.
Library
SHAKESPEARE IN THE LIBRARY
Jill Gage, Newberry Library
April 9, 2007
This seminar will focus on Newberry resources that can be integrated into the teaching of Shakespeare. We will discuss a variety of secondary sources and examine a range of the Newberry Library's particularly rich collections on Shakespeare and the Shakespearean age, including early printed editions of the plays and poems as well as manuscripts, prompt books, music, theater programs, maps, illustrations, and adaptations from the sixteenth century to the present day.
Foreign Language: Spanish (seminar was conducted entirely in Spanish)
LA MODERNIDAD Y LA MODERNIZACION EN LA LITERATURA LATINOAMERICANA: TEXTOS Y CONTEXTOS
Jorge Coronado, Northwestern University
April 16, 2007
Este seminario explora el surgimiento de la modernización en América Latina y la consolidación de la modernidad cultural que la acompaña. Luego de definir algunos términos útiles, nos enfocaremos sobre las expresiones variadas y peculiares que artistas e intelectuales de la región han usado para representar la experiencia moderna. Al comentar las implicaciones de estas representaciones, consideraremos las maneras en que estrategias de representación diversas han sido impactadas por tradiciones no-europeas, nociones de etnia y y raza, y el concepto de autoctonía.
World History
TRANSATLANTIC SLAVERY
Sherwin Bryant
April 19, 2007
This seminar will examine the African diaspora in Latin America during the nineteenth century. It will focus on how African peoples and their descendants made their way from slavery to freedom and how they helped shape and responded to political, economic, and cultural changes in their societies.
US Literature
THE POETRY OF EMILY DICKINSON
Ben Goluboff, Lake Forest College
April 20, 2007
This seminar will be a general introduction to the work of Emily Dickinson. Participants will discuss the sources and nature of Dickinson's poetic forms, her religious sensibility as it is displayed in her verse, and her sense of the potentialities of language.
Foreign Language: French (seminar was conducted entirely in French)
LA FRANCE COMME PAY MÉDITERANNÉAN AU MOYEN AGE:
UN AUTRE POINT DE VUE DE SA CULTURE MÉDIÉVALE
Megan Moore, Newberry Library
May 1, 2007
Bien des personnes ont déjà étudié l’histoire traditionelle de la France: la nation de liberté, égalité, et fraternité qui, d’après Gaston Paris, a commencé à éxister à partir de la parution de son histoire fondamentale, La Chanson de Roland. Mais en réflechissant, on peut dire aussi que la France qu’on connaît actuellement—une France qui a de grosses problèmes d’immigration, d’échanges politiques et culturelles avec le moyen orient et l’Afrique du Nord—était toujours si désunie, surtout au moyen age. Dans ce séminaire, nous lirons quelques courts éxtraits des épiques et romans Français du Moyen Age (La chanson de Roland, Cligès) pour développer une idée d’une France méditerranéene, qui a toujours était en proche contacte avec l’Orient, et nous essayerons de comparer les idées d’une monde médiéval méditerranéen avec les évenémments plus récents en France, comme la guerre entre la France et l’Algérie du XXe siècle. On espère surtout lancer une bonne discussion de la pluralité des cultures que la France est, et peut-être, a toujours été.
English Literature
MILTON'S PARADISE LOST
Kathryn Gucer, The Newberry Library
May 2, 2007
This seminar will examine the relationship between author John Milton and the political turmoil of mid-seventeenth century England. Participants will use Milton as a case study on clashes between literary and historical methods for interrogating the past.
US Literature
THE THINGS WE CARRY
Tim O'Brien
May 7, 2007
Responding to the city’s selection of The Things They Carried for One Book / One Chicago in Fall 2003, O’Brien wrote: “Although on the surface the book certainly focuses on the multiple tragedies of the Vietnam War, which to many might seem a distant and unapproachable topic, I have always believed that it is equally a book about the things all of us must finally carry through life—grief, pity, terror, love, longing, doubt, embarrassment, great joy and great despair. In part, too, this is a book about storytelling itself, and about the power of stories to help us deal with our human burdens: to help us heal, to help us understand, to console us and to offer reassurance that we are not alone in our daily moral struggles.” This seminar will be a conversation with Tim O’Brien about these things, about the things WE carry to and from The Things They Carried, a book that seems even more intimate, immediate, and necessary in 2007 than it did in 1990. The conversation will be moderated by David H. Krause, Assistant Vice President for Teaching and Learning Initiatives at Columbia College Chicago.
US History
ANTI-FEDERALISM AND REFORM MOVEMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
Robert Johnston, University of Illinois at Chicago
May 9, 2007
Most of us are well aware of the role that the Anti-Federalists played in the debate over the US Constitution. And though they failed to prevent the ratification of the Consitution, their ideas were never completely expunged from American politics. This seminar will explore the Anti-Federalists, who are often written out of our past as irrelevant losers, and the ways their ideas--which are important to include in our classrooms and in our current civic debates--have had a surprisingly durable and powerful impact upon American politics, especially reform movements. We will also look at the ways Anti-Federalist ideas have invigorated a variety of different movements that envision much more populist kinds of political systems, ranging from Progressive Era direct democracy to FDR's court packing scheme to current efforts to rethink the American electoral system.
Politics, Economics, and Government (PEG)/US History
US LEGAL HISTORY IN THE ANTEBELLUM PERIOD
Laura Edwards, Duke University
May 10, 2007
This seminar will explore localized legal process and its implications for understanding antebellum law, government, and politics through the comparison of murder trials in the early nineteenth century to those at the end of the century. Participants will examine how the local control on government and law impacted national perceptions of such thigs as civil and political rights and the meaning of citizenship.
Geography
THE POLITICS OF AFRIKAANS AND IDENTITY IN SOUTH AFRICA
Darrell Kruger, Illinois State University
May 11, 2007
This seminar will explore the relationship of ethnicity and political geography in pre- and post-apartheid South Africa. Participants will discuss in detail the position of Afrikaans in relation to the 1994 political changes and how it has impacted contemporary South Africa.
European History
MUSSOLINI AND ITALIAN FASCISM
Anthony Cardoza, Loyola University
May 11, 2007
This seminar will examine and assess the various anti-fascist, revisionist, and culturalist schools of interpretation on Mussolini and Italian Fascism that have emerged in the past two decades. At the same time, it will seek to locate the Duce's movement and regime within the comparative framework of European Fascism, in general, and German Nazism, in particular.
European History/World History
RUSSIAN IMPERIALISM IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE, 1700-1917
Charles Steinwedel, Northeastern Illinois University
May 14, 2007
This seminar will examine the Russian engagement with Islam, the settlement of the Russian steppe or plains, and the development of identities in a multinational state. Participants will discuss how perceptions and conceptions of Europe and Asia have influenced the interaction between Russia and its Muslim population.
US Literature
THE PROBLEM OF PUBLIC POETRY: ROBERT FROST AND RANDALL JARRELL
R. Clifton Spargo, Marquette University
May 15, 2007
This seminar will analyze the works of Robert Frost and Randall Jarrell and their impact on 20th-century American literature. Participants will compare and contrast a sampling of their work and discuss modern literary criticism of the authors, as well as the use of these works, and poetry in general, in high school classrooms.
World History
CONFUCIUS
Peter Carroll, Northwestern University
May 17, 2007
This seminar will discuss Confucius and his thinking in comparison to many of his contemporaries including Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Mozi, as well as his later followers. Participants will also briefly examine the effect of Confucian thought on imperial China.
World Literature
DOSTOEVSKY'S “THE GRAND INQUISITOR”
Gary Saul Morson, Northwestern University
May 18, 2007
This seminar will analyze Dostevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov, with particular attention paid to the chapters dealing with “The Grand Inquisitor.” Participants will come to understand the centrality and importance of this section to the novel as a whole, as well as to Dostoevsky's thinking about religion and freedom. Participants will also discuss the challenges facing teachers who attempts to tackle this complex novel in the high school classroom.
European History
RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE AND INTOLERANCE IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE
Jane Wickersham, University of Oklahoma
May 22, 2007
This seminar will investigate the nature of religious tolerance and intolerance in Europe during the Reformation. Notions of tolerance and intolerance look very different from today's perspective than they did to people four centuries ago, and this seminar will attempt, through the use primary and secondary sources, to place those notions in historical context; and also discuss how to help high school students understand these changing contexts.
Politics, Economics, and Government (PEG)
CONGRESS, THE PRESIDENT, AND THE SEPARATION OF POWERS
Michael Mezey, DePaul University
May 23, 2007
In this seminar, participants will discuss the relationship between Congress and the President, focusing on the concept of the unitary executive, as exemplified by the presidency of George W. Bush. Participants will examine several contemporary executive orders that codify this concept and read scholarly essays that evaluate its development in historical terms.
English Literature
FAIRY QUEENS AND VIRGIN QUEENS: ELIZABETH I IN SPENSERIAN EPIC
Regina Buccola, Roosevelt University
May 25, 2007
In his recent book on Spencer's The Faerie Queene, Matthew Woodcock came to the conclusion that there really is a tenuous connection between the world of Spenser’s “Gloriana” in whom, as he writes Sir Walter Raleigh in the letter preceding the first 3 books, he intends to embody Queen Elizabeth I and the world of the fairies. In this seminar, we will explore the idealized portrait of the Elizabethan court presented both in Spenser’s epic poem and in court entertainments presented to the queen in which she is also constructed as the monarch of fairyland. Following closely the contours of Woodcock’s own analysis, we will investigate the question: what do fairy queens have to do with the virgin queen.