Courses

Because this course intends to supplement rather that supplant existing course offerings, students will need to have a preliminary meeting with their prospective adviser to make sure that their research interests cannot be accommodated through regular courses. It that is the case, the student will enroll in the Independent Research Seminar and the first two class meetings will be devoted to specifying the questions s/he is interested in and the temporal and spatial range best suited for the purpose. The student and professor will then discuss the existing scholarly literature on the topic in the place and time period of interest and on the topic in general for comparative perspectives during the next two meetings. The rest of the class meetings will be devoted to discussing primary sources, the categories being used in the paper, the presentation of evidence and construction of an analytical framework, how to place the student's empirical findings in the context of the existing scholarly literature, and the organization of the paper.