HIST 6090 - Ethnohistory Seminar

Ethnohistory is the study of cultures combining research techniques and theoretical approaches from the fields of history and anthropology. This course will survey ethnohistorical research on a hemispheric level, including the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central and South America. We will read works in the areas of culture contact, colonialism, material analysis, historiography, oral history, gender, historical archaeology, ethnography, tribalization, globalization, and modernization. The core of ethnohistory lies in the realization shared by practitioners of the benefits obtained through the use of multiple lines of evidence to study history and culture. Ethnohistorians recognize that documents, archaeological findings, oral histories, and ethnographies can be profitable compared, contrasted, and integrated to elucidate the histories and cultural contexts of groups that have been ignored in conventional historical accounts. Thus, interdisciplinary study is incumbent in ethnohistory. By juxtaposing multiple lines of evidence, the ethnohistorian can at once examine the distant and the local, the general and the particular, bringing human experience into better focus.

Credits: 3 hours

Notes: May be repeated for credit. Open to Graduate Students Only.
Cross-Listed: ANTH 6090