LECTURE/DISCUSSION TOPICS AND READING ASSIGNMENTS:

March 29-31 Week I: Rights of Man, Right to Property: Empire and the “Age of Democratic Revolutions”

Tuesday:

·       Introduction and mechanics of the course

·       Discussion of the links between C&I 1 and C&I 2

·       Reading for Thursday:

o   Read syllabus!

o   In Reader:

§  Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden”



Thursday:

·       Free Citizen, Free Trade, Free Labor: Redefining Empire in the Age of Democratic Revolutions

·       Small group discussion: What is an empire? Discuss Kipling, “White Man’s Burden.”

·       Reading for Tuesday:

o   Review Locke, Ch. V “Of Property” and XVI “Of Conquest”; read Ch. XIX, 107-124.

o   In Reader:

§  Lebovics, “John Locke, Imperialism, and the First Stage of Capitalism”



April 5-7 Week II: Britain and France rebuild their Empires, and the rest of Europe jumps in.

Tuesday:

·       British and French Colonial Empires in Asia and Africa to 1870

·       End of the “First Imperial Age” and the beginning of the “Second European Empires”

    * Small group discussion of Locke and Lebovics

·       Read for Thursday:

Crais & Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus, Intro, ch 1&2

·       In Reader:

§  “Proposal for native army in Algeria”

§  Ferry, “On French Colonial Expansion”

Thursday:

·       Quiz 1

·       The Berlin Conference and “The Scramble for Africa”

·       Read for Tuesday:

o   Crais & Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus, ch 3-6 (due Thursday next)

o   In Reader:

§  Said, Orientalism, “Introduction”



April 12-14 Week III: Imperial Mindsets: Race, Civilization, and Exploration

Tuesday:

·       Reader Response 1 due (on Locke and Lebovics)

·       Defining and Imagining the “Other”: Orientalism, Anthropology, Social Darwinism, and the Sciences of Man

·       Small group discussion on Orientalism

·       Read for Thursday:

o   King Leopold’s Ghost, Intro, chapters 1-3

Thursday:

·       Quiz 2

·       The Man on the Spot: Explorers, Travelers, Missionaries, and ex-centric catalysts of Empire

·       First Student-led discussion on Baartman

·       Read for Tuesday:

o   On Camino:

§  Conklin, “ Colonialism and Human Rights” The American Historical Review, 103:419, April 1998.

o   In Reader:

§   “The Duties of a Faithful Widow” from Digest of Hindoo Law

§  Roy, “Petitions and Addresses on the Practice of Suttee (1818-1831)”

§  Bentinck, “Sati: Official Documents”



April 19-21 Week IV: Implementing Empire: The Hows and Whys of Ruling

Tuesday:

·       Reader Response 2 due (on Baartman)

·       Civilizing Missions: Human Rights and the Colonial Enterprise

·       Second Student-led discussion on Human Rights

·       Read for Thursday:

o   King Leopold’s Ghost, chapters 4-7

Thursday:

·       Quiz 3

·       Tools of Empire: Technological, Economic, and Biological Advantages

·       Read for Tuesday:

o   King Leopold’s Ghost 8-11

o   In Reader:

§  Frederick Lugard, “On indirect rule” (1913-1918), and G.L Angoulvant, “General Instructions to Civilian Administrators,” November 26, 1908 in William H. Worger et al (eds.), Africa and the West, 241-46


April 26-28 Week V: Imperial Life I

Tuesday:

·       Reader Response 3 due (On Human Rights)

·       Third Student-led discussion on King Leopold’s Ghost

·       Modes of Administration: Association and Assimilation

·       Economics and Landscapes of Empire

·       Read for Thursday:
o   In Reader:
§  Strobel, European Women and the second British Empire, chapter 1. 1-17

§   Dr L.J. Barot, “Colonization through the bed” (1902), in John D. Hargreaves (ed.), France and West Africa, 206-209

o   On Camino:

§   Conklin and Fletcher, European Imperialism, 124-131, 131-137; Stoler, White.

§

·       Evening Film: Begin A Passage to India

Thursday:

·       Quiz 4

·       Gender, Racial and Sexual Boundaries of Empire

·       Small group discussion on Sex and Gender in the Empire

·       Read for Tuesday:
o   Hergé, Tin Tin in the Congo

o   In Reader:

§  Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, excerpts.

§  Kipling, “The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes”



May 3-5 Week VI: Imperial Life II: Impacts in the Colonies and the Metropole(s)

Tuesday:

·       Colonial worlds of the colonized and colonizer

·       Legal distinctions: subjects and citizens

·       Seeing, Tasting, and Selling the Empire

·       Small group discussion on “living together”

·       Reading for Thursday:

o   Finish King Leopold’s Ghost

Thursday:

·       No Quiz this week (Professor Andrews away)

·       In Class finish A Passage to India

·       Reading for Tuesday:

o   In Reader:

§  Joe Harris Lunn, “Kande Kamara speaks: an oral history of the West African experience in France, 1914-1918,” in Melvin E. Page (ed.), Africa and the First World War, 28-53

Evening Film: Indochine



May 10-12 Week VII: “Imperial Nation States”: Impacts in the Metropole, impacts of the Metropole

Tuesday:

·       Reader Response 4 due on King Leopold’s Ghost

·       The Beginning of the End: The Boer War and World War I

·       The Colonies Come Home: Visitors, Guest Workers, and the “Evolués”

·       Small Group Discussion of “Kande Kamara speaks”

·       Reading for Thursday:

o   Reader:

§  M. K. Gandhi, “The Disease of Civilization”

§   Ho Chi Minh, “The Struggle Lies in the Colonies”

§  J.A. Hobson, On Imperialism, excerpt.

§  Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant”

Thursday:

·       Quiz 5

·       The Interwar Years: Precarious Order and the Promises of “Civilization”

·       Colonial Nationalisms:  From négritude to swadeshi to the Viet-Minh

·       World War II: War in the Colonies, Colonials in the War

·       Fourth student led discussion on critiques of colonialism

·       Reading for Tuesday:

o   Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, Preface, chapters 1-3, 5



May 17-19 Week VIII: Wars of Decolonization and the Costs to the Metropole

Tuesday:

·       Reader Response 5 due on Living in the Colonies

·       Decolonization, by War and Other Means: India, Vietnam, Algeria

·       Read for Thursday:

o   Alleg, The Question

Evening Film: The Battle of Algiers



Thursday:

·       Quiz 6

·       Decolonization in Africa

·       Soul Searching in the Land(s) of “Human” Rights

·       Fifth Student-led discussion on the Algerian War

·       Read for Tuesday:

o   Begag, Shantytown Kid



May 24-26 Week IX: The Globalizing West

Tuesday:

·       Reader Response 6 due on critiques of colonialism

·       Migration and the “Reverse Colonization” of Europe

·       Divided Loyalties: Colonials in the Metropole

·       Sixth student-led discussion on Shantytown Kid

·       Read for Thursday:

o   In Reader:

§  Scott, “Symptomatic Politics: The Banning of Islamic Head Scarves in French Public Schools”

§  Bowen, “Private Arrangements”

§  Kureishi, “My Son the Fanatic”



Thursday:

·       Reader Response 7 due on the Algerian War

·       Quiz 7

·       Secular States and the Challenges of Religious and Ethnic Diversity

·       Seventh student–led discussion on Scott, Bowen, Kureishi

·       Read for Tuesday:

o   On Camino:

§   Schumacher, “The United States: Empire as a Way of Life?”

o   Reader:

§  Amitav Ghosh, “The Anglophone empire,” in The New Yorker, 7 April 2003



May 31-June 2 Week X: Global Realities in the Post-Colonial World?

Tuesday:

·       The US, an Empire without colonies?

·       Read for Thursday:

o   In Reader:

§  Dinesh D’Souza, “Two cheers for colonialism,” in The Chronicle of Higher Education Review, 10 May 2002



Thursday: The Global Legacy of the Colonial Encounter

·       Quiz 8

·       Concluding discussion

·       Take home final distributed



In-class final at university mandated time during finals week; take home essay due at the time of the in-class exam.



LEARNING OBJECTIVES FOR THE IMPERIAL WEST I&II:

Arts of Scholarship:

As this course is not only a history of western imperialism but also a freshman core course, we consider a significant part of our task to be the development of what we call the “Arts of Scholarship,” the skills indispensable to college students as they pursue their education. Our class model is the introduction of students to academic conversations concerning the Imperial West. In order to participate in these conversations, students will need to develop the following skills:



   *The ability to ask good questions, both for research and discussion purposes

   *The habit of assuming responsibility for and ownership of their learning environment and its success

    *The ability to critically read and write about primary and secondary sources

    *The ability to research a topic through both primary and secondary sources

    *The ability to synthesize different kinds of sources and delivery mechanisms into a coherent narrative of the historical issue in question with the goal of participating in the historical “conversation.”

   *The development of skills appropriate to classroom discussion that is student-directed and engages all members of the class, including the ability to learn from other students in a respectful manner.

   *The ability to discuss one’s work in a professional manner.

   *An understanding of how historians and other scholars develop critical stances on their field of knowledge.  This entails all of the above “arts” but also the introduction to the arenas in which scholars participate in these conversations, including peer collaboration, conference presentations, seminar discussions, and of course through the written construction of a historically grounded argument.





Historical Knowledge:

By the end of the second quarter of this sequence, students will have gained the following:

   *A nuanced and interdisciplinary understanding of the ways in which global interactions shape cultures, both colonized and colonizing.

   *A historically grounded understanding of both the impact of Europe on the world it affected through imperialism and colonial development and the ways in which Europe was shaped by those varied encounters.

   *Knowledge of the hierarchies of power that structured European imperialism.

   *Understanding of the political, religious, philosophical, and scientific strategies by which European imperialism was justified and maintained.

   *Awareness of the interconnections between democracies and empires, through exploration of discourses of rights and citizenship and the economic mechanisms of capitalism. The role of the US in the global context will be an important piece of this conversation.



CORE CURRICULUM REQUIREMENT LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

Cultures and Ideas I:

Students will:

    1. Recall details relevant to the course theme and historical context of the objects, texts, ideas, issues, and/or events studied. (Global Cultures, Arts and Humanities)

    2. Identify significant elements of the cultures examined. (Global Cultures, Arts and Humanities)

    3.  Recognize the complexity of the cultures examined. (Global Cultures, Arts and Humanities)

    4. Analyze and/or interpret significant objects, texts, ideas, issues and/or events in their historical contexts, using at least one disciplinary method. (Critical Thinking).

     5. Reflect on and examine both shared and diverse human experiences so that they recognize the similarities and differences across cultures as well as historical periods. They will comprehend the relevance of the past to their understanding of the present while coming to understand the perspective of their own cultural assumptions and values. (Perspective).



Cultures and Ideas II:

Students will:

    * Make connections between the cultures and objects, texts, ideas, issues, and/or events examined in C & I 1 and 2. (Global Cultures, Arts and Humanities)

    * Demonstrate increased understanding of the complexity and/or larger contexts of the cultures examined. (Global Cultures, Arts and Humanities)

    * Question and/or evaluate the effects cultural understanding has on the interpretation of the objects, texts, ideas, issues, and/or events central to the two courses. (Critical Thinking).

    * Question and evaluate both shared and diverse human experiences so that they recognize similarities and differences across cultures as well as historical periods. They will comprehend the relevance of the past to their understanding of the present while coming to understand the perspective of their own cultural assumptions and values. (Perspective).