Oh, The Courses I Have Taken . . .

As I put the final pieces in place for the forthcoming FractalPast modules, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own coursework. Much, but not all, of my knowledge base has come from my own research and teaching career since I graduated with my PhD. But I was also very fortunate to have a very broad foundation laid for me before I ever became a practitioner myself. I enjoyed excellent teachers offering intellectual rigor mixed with compassion and care.

​I took several US history surveys in night school while I was serving Uncle Sam, and I do remember the encouragements I received from those instructors. One US literature course made a deep impression, as it mixed in a fair amount of history. I have been an enthusiast of the American Transcendentalists ever since.
 
The University of Illinois offered an enormously broad catalog of class subjects. I concentrated in American history, but I was obliged, and happy, to take a broad array of non-US courses as well. There was the class in ancient Greek history with John Buckler, African history with Charles Stewart, modern British history with Walter Arnstein, the French Revolution and Napoleon (which I loved) with John Lynn, and a course on early twentieth century international history focusing on the rise of fascism with David Prochaska. My favorite non-US course was a class on the history of the Reformation with C. G. Estabrooks, a subject that has stayed with me all these years and which informed (and informs) my understanding of US history in unexpected ways. I also took a couple of obligatory US and Western/European survey courses.
 
There was a lot of US history as well: stunning lectures on early America and colonial history with John Pruett; a class on antebellum America and also one on the Civil War, both with the great Robert Johannsen; and I took two senior seminars, one on slavery and African American history with Juliet E. K. Walker and one on cultural performance in America with Kathryn Oberdeck. That latter course was my first real introduction to theory; learning about P. T. Barnum taught me as much about America as anything. I also took a fascinating course through the Economics Department in US economic history.
 
My Master’s degree is in American Studies, and the coursework there with Eric Sandeen and John Dorst involved deep theoretical considerations about American culture. But I supplemented those classes with lots of history, including a course on the modern US from 1890 through the 1940s, as well as a course on post-WWII US, both with Bud Moore, a big influence on me at the time. I also took a course on the American Revolution with Ronald Schultz.
 
Most of the classes in one’s PhD program focus on broad reading and research assignments in seminars, but I took lively reading colloquia in early American and modern US history with Michael Batinski and Howard Allen, and I did two research seminars on modern US history focusing on culture and Hollywood with Jon Bean. I also took a course on Russian and Soviet history with Ted Weeks in support of an exam field I undertook. In total I did five exam fields: early America; modern US; Russia/USSR; a custom field in the history of American communism; and a field in American performance history under Sarah Blackstone. Each one of those fields required hundreds of books.
 
Of course all of this was preparatory to my own teaching career, over twenty years in the classroom at both the graduate and undergraduate level, teaching scores of courses on well over a dozen different topics. That will be a post for another day.
 
It was a fine and varied background that prepared me for my own research into US diplomatic relations with the Netherlands. While that topic may seem rather rarified, it did in fact incorporate much of what I had learned about American culture and politics, as well as Western and European history, while also integrating new ideas and perspectives on economic history, and even American culture and performance. Anne Frank’s wall in her secret Amsterdam annex, after all, was festooned with many recognizable Hollywood icons.
 
Drop me a line in the comments about your favorite History courses. What stayed with you and why?
 
—David J. Snyder