Modernity's Histories in Global Context
Contested Narratives, Models, Processes
An intercampus graduate curriculum
at the University of California
Davis, Irvine, Riverside and Santa Cruz campuses
A SET OF SEMINARS LINKED BY CONFERENCES AND INTERNET WEB SITES
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT
DAVIS, IRVINE, RIVERSIDE, AND SANTA CRUZ
With funding from the UC Office of the President and participa- ting
campus
Deans, faculty members in History and the historical Social Sciences offer
in the 1996-1997 academic year an inter- campus graduate program focused
on theorizations of modernity and interpretations of modern and early-modern
world history.
The UC-Riverside field in Early Modern World History
is participating in this intercampus program. More information also available
about the UCR History
Department.
INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT AND RATIONALE:
This program will define, critique, and empirically test influential
conceptualizations of modernity and the dynamics of global history in the
early modern, modern, and contemporary worlds.
The concept of modernity is inescapably historical. Its salience has
risen enormously in recent years, in large measure because of the
increasingly pervasive sense that epochal shifts have occurred--and still
are occurring--in structures and relationships which were widely assumed
to be constitutive of twentieth-century modernity. The literature on
post-modernity addresses these shifts, but all fields in social and cultural
studies confront them, both in the form of methodological- epistemological
self-critiques and in focusing on substantive issues of scholarly research.
Among anthropologists, economists, historians, political scientists,
and sociologists much inquiry is presently focused on developments leading
away from the social formations of the "corporate welfare state"
and
state-socialism toward post-modern manifestations of neo-liberalism,
post-communism, globalization, and cultural pluralism at the level of
community and family and in intellectual life. The international
state-system has undergone revolutionary change. In the non-western world,
power- ful movements of economic development and political reorganization
constitute new or strengthened elements in the global configuration, while
in other contexts crises in the material or biological spheres challenge
existing strategies of development. Everywhere, environmental and ecological
developments until recently ignored or unrecognized raise profound questions
about global trajectories.
The fields of literary and art studies assign great importance to the
socio-economic, political, and historical analysis of modernity. They have,
in their turn, defined in crucial ways the issues in play in the present
historical conjuncture, as, for example, through the analysis of cultural
modernism itself, and by their contribution to the linguistic and discursive
turns in the social sciences.
In the fields of history and the historical social sciences, the study
of modernity has long encompassed its emergence in the post-medieval western
world, as the nineteenth-century designation of the Renaissance as the
threshold of modern history indicates. In the twentieth century, and
especially since World War II, the complex interaction between the western
and non-western worlds in the generation of modernity has brought forth
powerful, productive, and often contentious conceptualizations, as the
social science literature on development and underdevelopment and the
historical elaboration of world-system analysis indicate.
Major elements of these modes of thought were anchored in the
historical analysis of European capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism
in
the early modern centuries. It is not for this reason alone, however, that
the study of global dynamics in the early modern world is essential. It
is
equally vital to attain a long-range perspective on the successive forms
and
epochs of global configurations, so as--among other things--to defeat the
still widespread inclination to postulate a single, teleologically
unfolding world history.
COURSES
Fall 1996
UCSC Patterns in World History, 1500-1800
History 201A, Professors Edmund Burke, III, and David G.
Sweet
UCI Network Theory and the Analysis of Historical
Modernity: Communities, Social Movements, and Elites
Anthropology 241B,
Professor Douglas White
UCD Models of Western Modernity
Social Theory and Comparative History 250
Professor William Hagen
Winter 1997
UCSC Patterns in World History, 1800-1975
History 201B, Professor Edmund Burke, III
UCR Materials for the Early Modern World
History 207, Professor Randolph
Head
UCR Colonial America and West Africa in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries
History 277, Professor Ray
A. Kea and Sharon Salinger
UCD Debates Over Globalization in the Contemporary World
Social Theory and Comparative History 290
Professor Christopher Lloyd, University of New England,
Australia (UCD Visiting Professor)
GRADUATE STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN THE INTERCAMPUS CURRICULUM
The Three Participation Options:
1. Enrollment in home-campus courses for letter-grade credit.
2. Enrollment in a home-campus variable-unit course under the supervision
of
a faculty member, with the objective of monitoring one or more of the
off-campus courses via Internet (see below). This work will entail one or
more papers on subjects related to the course monitored, as well as
participation in the correspond- ing quarterly workshop (see below). This
option may be exercised in addition to #1 and/or #3.
3. Enrollment in an off-campus course for letter-grade credit. This option
will entail commuting either between the two northern campuses or the two
southern campuses, so as to enroll in and attend in person one of the
intercampus curriculum's courses.
Coursework via Internet/Worldwide Web
Web sites have been established at each participating campus to communicate
to interested graduate students and faculty an array
of materials concerning the above-listed seven courses. These will include:
(1) a statement of the central questions each course raises; (2) course
syllabi and bibliographies; (3) sum- maries of course discussions on
specific topics; (4) summaries and critiques of course readings; (5)
summaries of student papers written, and research projects undertaken, in
these courses.
Through consultation of these materials at the Web site, students and
faculty will be able to follow the progress of the linked courses, and to
submit questions or other contributions to them.
Quarterly Workshops and Year's-End Conference
1. In the early winter quarter 1997, a weekend workshop will be held at
one
of the participating campuses. Here students who have exercised
participation option #2 and others involved in the program will present
papers written in the preceding quarter. A major guest speaker will attend
as a commentator and to present a paper.
2. In the early spring quarter 1997 an analogous workshop will take place
for students involved in the winter quarter cur- riculum.
3. In the late spring quarter 1997 a year's-end conference will be held.
This will be a forum for graduate student papers, whether revisions of
papers written in the participating courses (or others unrelated to the
curriculum of the intercampus program) submitted in response to a call for
papers at the four campuses. Participating faculty members will serve as
auditors, discussants, and commentators in a roundtable on the year's
program. As at the workshops, an extramural guest will present a paper and
otherwise take part in the conference.
GRADUATE STUDENT FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
1. Travel funding will be available to enable graduate students at the
northern campuses (Davis and Santa Cruz) and the southern campuses (Irvine
and Riverside) to commute within their respective areas of the state as
credit-earning students in off-campus courses.
2. Graduate student stipends of approximately $800 per quarter will be
available to participants in the classes listed above who, in an open
application process, are selected by course instructors to summarize the
proceedings in their classes on their campus Web Sites reserved for this
purpose.
3. Travel and lodging expenses for off-campus graduate students and faculty
participants in the workshops and conference will be covered.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONSULT THE FOLLOWING
WEBSITES OR CONTACT THE FOLLOWING PERSONS:
UCD WEBSITE: http://moby.ucdavis.edu/ERICKSON/CCR/menu.htm.
1. William W. Hagen, Professor of History and Director,
Center for Comparative Research in History, Society, and
Culture, UC Davis, Davis, CA 95616. Telephone: (916)
752-1638. E-mail: wwhagen@ucdavis.edu.
2. Sherry Smith-Williams, CCR Program Administrator.
Telephone: (916) 752-8707, 754-8328. E-mail:
slsmithwilliams@ucdavis.edu.
UCI Website: http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/doug.html
Douglas R. White, Professor of Social Science, UC
Irvine, Irvine, CA 92717. Telephone: (714) 824-5893.
E-mail: drwhite@orion.oac.uci.edu.
UCR WEBSITE: http://www.ucr.edu/history/earlymod/EMWhome.html
1. Randolph Head, Associate Professor of History, UC
Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521. Telephone: (909)
787-2148. E-mail: randolph.head@ucr.edu.
2. Ray A. Kea, Professor of History. Telephone: (909)
787-5400. E-mail: kea@ucrac1.ucr.edu.
3. Sharon V. Salinger, Associate Professor of History.
Telephone: (909) 787-7248.
E-mail:sharon.salinger@ucr.edu.
UCSC
1. Edmund Burke, III. Professor of History, 112 Merrill
College, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. Telephone:
(408) 459-2287. E-mail: eburke@cats.ucsc.edu.
2. David G. Sweet, Associate Professor of History, 153
Merrill College. Telephone: (408) 459-2391. E-mail:
david_sweet@macmail.ucsc.edu.