Early
Modern
World
History

A Graduate Field at the Department of History
University of California, Riverside

The History Department at UC-Riverside offers a Field in Early Modern World History. Faculty involved include:

Lucille Chia (Imperial China, Sung-Qing, History of Printing)
Richard Godbeer (Colonial North America, Gender and Sexuality)
Randolph Head (Early Modern Europe)
Ray Kea (Africa before 1900)
Rebecca "Monte" Kugel (Native American History)
Georg Michels (Early Russia)
Robert Patch (Colonial Latin America)
Sharon Salinger (Colonial North America)

as well as others. The goal of the program is to prepare students both for teaching in world history, and also for research that includes large-scale or comparative perspectives while concentrating on particular regions during the early modern period. Several students have sucessfully prepared in the field as part of the PhD or MA programs during the last years.

A 1996 essay helps set out our goals for the field . We regularly offer two graduate courses in the field: HIST 207 is an introductory colloquium in which students read major works in the theory and practice of world history, while HIST 277 is offered (often taught by a team of faculty) with special focus on regions or problems. For example, Profs. Kea and Salinger regularly teach a course on the Atlantic in the age of the slave trade, and Profs. Chia and Patch teach an introduction to the 'early modern Pacific Rim'.

The History Department has committed itself to developing our current Complementary/Teaching field into a major Research field as resources become available and as the subdiscipline of world history matures.
 



Intercampus initiatives

The UCR History Department's offerings in World History are coordinated with the UC Multicampus World History Workshop .

From 1996 to 1998, the study of the Early Modern World at UC-Riverside was part of an intercampus graduate enrichment program on the conceptualization and study of modernity as a historical phenomenon. Funded by the UC President's IAPIF incentive, scholars and students from the historically oriented social sciences share joint courses and conferences on "Modernity's Histories in Global Context: Contested Narratives, Models, Processes ." Students enrolled in classes on social theory and models of modernity that cross disciplines and regional boundaries to improve our understanding of large scale historical processes.

Further intercampus initiatives have now been approved and are in operation. In May of 1999, a proposal was launched for a University of California Multi-Campus Research Group in World History , which has been approved by the UC Office of the President. The new " World History Workshop " offers regular conferences with a special focus on graduate student work in progress, talks, seminars, and other events of interest to world historians.

This page built and maintained by Randolph C. Head
Updated January 9, 2002