I realized that I never wrote about my courses for this semester, so I will do that now. The semester is now half over and I am counting down until Christmas break! Instead of writing a separate post for each course, I will give a brief description of each course in this post. You can find my book list post, HERE.
HIST 590
Gender in Latin America meets twice a week with a mix of grad students and undergrads. As with all 500 level courses, we have a separate 4th hour meeting with the professor to discuss our addition work/readings. For this course, however, we have a 4th hour, but no additional readings. Our only additional work is a reading review each week. The course has 15 books, but we do are not reading one per week as you might expect. We are reading in chronological and generally read chapters from 3-4 books per week. Overall, it is not a bad course and it fulfills my requirement of an out-of-concentration course. The course is taught by Dr. William C. Van Norman.
HIST 600
The Seminar in Early American history changes from year-to-year depending on who teaches it. This year the course is taught by Dr. David Dillard and focuses on his area, Southern history. The reading list for this course is pretty short, but the course layout is very different. The course is broken up into three blocks of three-week segments. The first week, the whole class reads the same book. The second week we break apart and read different books from the historiography. Finally, the third week we discover how the history of the period is viewed by the public via museum, movies, television, etc. It is a unique course design and I really like it as it allows me to incorporate a little of my Public History training.
HIST 700
My thesis research is going well and I have been working toward my thesis since early this year. Over the summer I did a great deal of secondary reading and gathered all my primary sources. I have moved past the research phase and am now into writing. My first chapter is due October 24, and I have about 12 pages so far. My goal is 20. After writing chapter 1, I will skip to chapter 3 and have it done by Thanksgiving break. Before I leave for Christmas break, I hope to have Chapters 1 and 3 completed and substantial progress on chapter 2. The entire project is due the middle of February.
I meet weekly with my thesis advisor, Dr. Christopher Versen, and we discuss what I have read, what I have written, and where the project is going. The other members of my thesis committee include Dr. Chris Arndt and Dr. John Butt.
