History
2010 Newberry Library Undergraduate Seminar
Islands: Missionaries, Migration,and Labor in the Atlantic World and on the Pacific Rim
Winter/Spring 2010
Application Deadline: October 2, 2009
The flow of goods, labor and travelers across the oceans has a rich and troubled history. In both the Atlantic and Pacific Worlds, the global exchange of natural resources and labor, the movement of travelers, explorers, missionaries and tourists, and the displacement of indigenous peoples are complex processes which historians, economists, and anthropologists typically approach within traditional disciplinary frameworks. But traditional disciplinary approaches give us little opportunity or cause to think comparatively about the relationship between these developments as they emerged in the Atlantic and Pacific.
Islands: Missionaries, Migration, and Labor will approach the comparative study of global development in the modern world from the perspective of islands. Greg Denning has argued that islands and beaches are unique, liminal spaces of cultural exchange; in the era of colonial expansion and imperial control of the Atlantic and Pacific regions of the western hemisphere, islands became geographical spaces where nations sought to determine the social, political and economic contours of the new world. Europeans approached islands as weigh stations, spaces of economic exchange and as host communities for colonizers who established outposts of their civilization between Europe, America and native islanders of the Atlantic and Pacific.
The goal of this course is to understand how islands, especially colonized island like Hawai’i, Haiti, Puerto Rico and the Philippines became central to the economic and political development of the Americas. We will approach islands as microcosm of the global contact zones which provide us with the opportunity to compare culture, capital, and labor across the hemispheres. We will examine slavery, indenture and other forms of labor; how race and class functioned among and between laborers, natives, settlers; ethnic diversity and cultural exchange which resulted in creoleization and other forms of cultural hybridity; the study of islands and islanders by missionaries, scientists and settlers who acted as folk ethnographers and whose work ultimately promoted travel and tourism. Student analysis will focus on primary source material from the collection such as ethnographic and scientific reports, letters and diaries, images and drawings, poetry and fiction.
About the Instructors
Student Selection Procedures
This course provides an opportunity for upper-level students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to participate in an intensive seminar and produce an original research project using the world-renowned collections of the Newberry Library. This is an especially important opportunity for students considering graduate work in history or the humanities.
Up to five DePaul students from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will be selected to participate in this seminar along with students from UIC, Roosevelt, and Loyala universities. The course meets from January to May 2010 (16 weeks) at the Newberry Library, at Walton and Clark streets (near the Division stop on the CTA Red Line). Participating DePaul students will earn 9 hours credit in two disciplines. Participation in NLUS can also be used to satisfy the "Experiential Learning" requirement in DePaul's Liberal Studies program.
Admission to the seminar is by application, and spaces are limited. Applications are due October 2, 2009. The course is rigorous and demanding, and requires a substantial commitment of time and energy, including on-site research and class time at the Newberry Library. If you are interested in a challenging original research experience in one of the country's best rare materials libraries, though, please consider applying!
Click the links below for further information about the 2010 Newberry Library Undergraduate Seminar and for the application form. Please contact Professor Tikoff (by e-mail, or by phone: 773-325-1570) if you have questions.