History 598.01

Senior Colloquium

Phelps

Credit hours: 5
GEC categories: Consult academic advisor
Prerequisites: History 398 and possibly others; consult academic advisor.

Text Books:

Example Syllabus:
Website: http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/phelps51/christopherphelps.htm

Course Objectives: This colloquium is the culmination of the history major at The Ohio State University, offering an occasion to put into practice all the intellectual skills acquired over years of historical study. In short, in this course you get to write history yourself -- not just study it. The core of the course lies in conceiving, planning, researching, writing, revising, polishing, and presenting a substantial paper (20-25 pages) of scholarly quality. Students shall select their own research subject and work with the guidance of the professor to make their topic more precise and exact. They will strive to develop strong theses and arguments, and to produce a major research paper demonstrating familiarity with the most pertinent historical literature in their field of choice.

Course Content: This specific version of the course (variant from professor to professor) focuses on the 1960s. While "the sixties" in popular culture becomes a trite series of cliches about hippies, sex, and drugs, the decade was actually a momentous, tumultuous decade global in scope -- a watershed. The "sixties" here is a loose term that may best be understood as beginning in 1956 with the Montgomery bus boycott and the Hungarian uprising against Soviet domination and ending in 1973 with the onset of economic recession, the American troop withdrawal from Vietnam, and the eruption of the Watergate scandal. The decade's expressly ideological and popular mass movements (both reformist, radical, and conservative--this was not only the decade of the Black Panthers but of Republicans Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan), its wave of revolutions and wars, and its vast cultural and social transformations in spheres ranging from music to sexuality continue to be subjects of controversy down to the present. The sixties wrought great changes, in both privileged and underdeveloped societies. Any research topic from any corner of the world in the 1960s--from China to Czechoslovakia, from Berkeley to Birmingham--will be considered legitimate.

Method of Presentation: The course will be a seminar-style discussion, with some assigned readings and some independent self-driven research.

Method of Evaluation: Participation, attendance, and above all completion of the major assigned paper will be the basis for weighing student performance.

Course Description Categories Key

Return to course listing