Words into Ploughshares

Courses

Here you’ll find course descriptions for most of the course I taught at the University of Oregon’s R. D. Clark Honors College, the University of Adelaide’s Discipline of History, and Quest University. Clicking on the course title will bring you to the full description of the courses, and, in some cases, will allow you to view one or more versions of the course syllabus.

  • Europe, Empire, and the World

    Discipline of History, University of Adelaide

    This course will introduce you to world history from approximately 1450 to the eve of the Great War. While the course’s scope is global, its focus is on Europe. In this period, Europe explored and conquered new worlds: new worlds of religion, art, science, politics, production, and consumption, as well as the “New World” of…

  • Fate and Virtue

    Division of Arts and Humanities, Quest University Canada

    In this course—one of three in the Humanities foundation series—we will read one of the greatest poems ever written (Homer’s Iliad), excerpts from two writers who can lay claim to have created the discipline of history as we understand it (Herodotus and Thucydides), two of the world’s greatest philosophers (Plato and Aristotle), and the playwright…

  • French Colonial History

    R.D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon

    On August 26, 1789, the French National Assembly voted to adopt the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.” Its first article began, “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” Yet if the French can be thought the authors of the modern notion of human rights, French practice was more ambiguous…

  • History, Historians, and Historiography

    Division of Arts and Humanities, Quest University Canada

    This is a history course, but it is different from the other history courses you have taken. It is not about a particular place, period, or people. Nor is it about a particular theme. Instead, it is about history itself: what it is, why we do it, and how we do it. Our guide in…

  • Honors College History: Recent & Contemporary History

    R.D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon

    In the third term of the year-long Honors College history sequence, we will study politics, society, and culture in Europe from 1789 to the present, as well as the impact of European colonial contact. We will study the great transformations that helped form the world we live in, touching on themes of revolution, subjugation, and…

  • Honors College History: The Ancient World

    R.D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon

    In this course, we will explore the origins of civilization from the early human societies in the Near East to the culture of Europe in the early middle ages. We will examine evolution within European societies, but we will also work comparatively, looking at the diverse external influences, particularly from the Mediterranean, that helped shape…