Links:
(suggestions welcome):
possible paper topics;
other proseminar courses

amazon.com (2012 edition)	table of contents; hi-res print version (for 2003 4th edition)

The History Department has the following definition in the UCSB general catalog (link):
"The Proseminar. The particular skills of historians are the ability to define issues, to gather information pertinent to a solution, and to digest and report that information in a clear and well-conceived argument. These skills, which are summed up by the word 'research,' are especially cultivated in undergraduate proseminars, in which the entire term is devoted to preparing a paper on a specialized topic of research. Majors are required to take at least one such course during their career here."

In sum, a proseminar offers students the opportunity to actually do what historians do: conduct original research and present their results orally and in writing. I have designed this course to help you select a topic of interest within the broader theme of the course, and to formulate interesting questions about that topic. We then turn to research methods: how to find secondary and primary materials, and how to analyze, interpret and organize our findings. Finally, the seminar provides a forum for the oral and written presentation of the results.
As far as possible these projects should draw on original source material (e.g. diaries, letters, speeches, contemporary diplomatic and newspaper reports, memoirs, autobiographies, etc.). Knowledge of German is not required (although it can be helpful!).

Course handouts (back to top)

• 2004:
  • SYLLABUS
  • prospectus
  • notetaking with index cards
  • peer reviewing
  • oral presentation
  • web format guide.

Course materials from previous years (back to top)

• 1997 syllabus and paper topics
• 1999 syllabus (topic was post-1945 German history) and samples of work (2 papers, 2 thesis papers, 1 bibliography).
• 2002 syllabus (now 2 meetings/week). We worked hard to publish the papers on the web, on the research section of my UCSB Holocaust Oral History Project website. In all six papers and one pilot "web project" (includes an annotated bibliography and a description of a "primary source" interview) are there, about: Kristallnacht, 1920s press on Hitler, Holocaust and founding of Israel; Nazi nuclear bomb program, Sinti and Rom (gypsies); Seventh Day Adventists. (link to papers, to Anne Frank project)

Other proseminar courses (back to top)

• Research Seminar in British History (by Gary Gibbs, Roanoke College, Fall 1998) link
• Seminar in American Social History (by Shelton Stromquist, Univ. of Iowa, Fall 2002) link
• An Urban History Research Seminar (by Prof. Vandermeer, Arizona State, Spr. 2004) link; sample paper at bottom
• History Junior Seminar (by Anthony Iaccarino, Reed College, Spr. 2004) link
• Senior Seminar (by Paul Harris, Moorhead College) link
• Senior Seminar (by Peter Baldwin, Univ. of Connecticut, Spr. 2004) link
• Senior Honors Thesis Seminar (by Harold Marcuse [me!], UCSB, 1998-99) link (or link)

Ideas for Topics (mostly post-1945) (back to top)

• Film "Shanghai Ghetto": www.shanghaighetto.com; making the film with quicktime (suggestion from Albert Leung)
• Art and the Holocaust site by Beit Lohamei Haghetaot (Kibbutz in Israel founded by former ghetto resistance fighters). Sophisticated design and classroom activities, only a few works each from 27 artists.
• commented, alphabetical list of Holocaust links (Prof. Al Filreis, English, UPenn)
• Holocaust Links page (Joyce Meyer, Champaigne-Urbana Jewish Federation)
• Internet Resources on Genocide and Mass Killings from the University of the West of England.
  Timeline, Documents, Glossary, Functionaries of the Third Reich, War Crimes and Criminals,
  Genocide and Mass Killing, The Jewish Holocaust, World War II Resources.
• Hypermedia Sourcebook: "Responses to the Holocaust," by Robert Leventhal, Univ. of Virginia (not recently updated, with a fair number of dead links, but still interesting)
  
• Marshall Plan:
  • The Library of Congress put its 1997 (50th Anniv.) exhibition on-line (link).
  • The US Embassy in Germany has an informative site with the text of Marshall's Harvard speech. The core of the site is a text by Ohio State Univ. professor Michael Hogan (link).
  • The UCSB library has a copy of Documentary History of the Truman Presidency (Dennis Merrill, ed); vol. 3 is entitled " United States policy in occupied Germany after World War II: denazification, decartelization, demilitarization, and democratization." UCSB call no. Main Library E813 .D56 1995.
• 1948 Berlin Blockade and airlift
  • The British National Archives offers a teaching site with six documents (link).
  • The Truman Library has a resource site (link) with a student activity portion (link), it also "chunked" the book Airbridge to Berlin and put it online (link).
  • The online supplement to Hyde Flippo's book The German Way has a summary illustrated with present-day photos (link).
  • The US Embassy in Germany offers a July 23, 1998 speech by Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. John Hamre on "The 50th Anniversary of the Berlin Airlift" (link).
  • The Fairfax, VA Cold War Museum has pages on the 1948 Berlin Blockade and airlift.
  • Willy Brandt.org has a short page with definitions (link).
  • PBS's site on their "Race for the Superbomb" film has a page (link).
• 1953 uprising
  • In 1999 one of Prof. Marcuse's proseminar students did a research paper on international aspects: Int'l Effects of June 17, 1953 Uprising (link)
  • Prof. Gerhard Rempel's lecture text (link)
  • 3-page summary of a June 2003 lecture at the German Historical Institute in Washington, a "50 years later" assessment (pdf)
  • German Gov't Political Education Center site (in German) has lots of multimedia documents (link)
• 1950s Politics
  • E. German booklet celebrating Khrushchev's Aug. 7, 1957 visit to East Berlin, on Randall Bytwerk's German propaganda site at Calvin College (link).
  • Woodrow Wilson Center: Hope M. Harrison, Translation and Commentary "New Evidence on Khrushchev's 1958 Berlin Ultimatum" (link).
• Berlin Wall
  • Washington, DC Newseum site has four features: news reporting East vs. West, historical story, Stalin manipulates a photo, essay on censorship (link)
  • Chris DeWitt maintains a regularly updated Berlin Wall site with some short essays he wrote since his first visit in 1979, lots of pictures, and a short, annotated list of links (link).
  • Burkhard Kirste at the Free University of Berlin maintains a site with a short history of the wall, some facts, and a set of links (link).
  • Paper by one of Prof. Marcuse's proseminar students, with bibliography: Politics, People and the Berlin Crisis: June-August, 1961 (link)
  • Yahoo's page of links
  • The British National Archives offers a teaching site with six documents (link).
• Willy Brandt
  • WillyBrandt.org has a timeline-based site (with flash; plain html)
• JFK's June 1963 speech in Berlin:
  • US National archives has audio and image of notes (link)
  • Joe Knapp (no info on who he is) maintains a comprehensive JFK site with the full text of the Berlin speech (link) and press reactions to it (link), as well as a discussion of the "jelly doughnut" reproach (link)
  • Philipp Huning, a student at Tubingen University, has a site with primary materials, including JFK's diary entries about his 1945 travels through Germany (overview [web archive version May 2003-June 2004]). He created the site for a summer semester 2000 internet seminar about JFK (hyperlinked seminar syllabus). He also has the complete text of the speech (link [Aug. 02-Oct. 04]).
• Cold War:
• CNN has a site based on its award-winning 24-episode 1998 TV series (link).
  TurnerLearning.com made a site for educators based on the CNN series (link).
• Red Army Faction (1970s left-wing terrorism)
  • Richard Huffman, author of This is Baader-Meinhof, maintains Baader-Meinhof.com (link)
  • Wikipedia has a detailed, well-hyperlinked page (link)
  • The Israeli Institute for Counter-Terrorism has a short page (link)
• 1985 commemoration at Bitburg
• Thesis paper by one of Prof. Marcuse's students in 1999 (link)
• UTexas has the texts of Reagan's speeches in Belsen (link) and Bitburg (link)
• The military newspaper Stars & Stripes posted its May 1985 news reports on Belsen (link) and Bitburg (link).
• Joey Ramone wrote a protest song about it (link to article)
• Issues of German Unification in 1990
  • A 1998 National Endowment for the Humanities summer institute for high-school teachers put together a "Document-based Question" (link) with some interesting material (click button in upper left for analysis): 1989 "twin experiment" text by Peter Schneider, Stasi Report on Motives for Emigration, currency union, charter of Treuhand, 1991-97 unemployment, intra-German migration 1991-97, October 3, 1997 speech by Helmut Kohl.
  • President Clinton's papers contain a number of documents regarding German-US relations during the 1990s. I've put links to them in the reader (link), or go to the Clinton virtual library (no search engine, unfortunately).
  • e-text of the Sept. 1990 2+4 Treaty.
• Holocaust-era Assets: Compensation and Restitution
• US Dept. of State has a collection of documents relating to compensating victims and restoring assets (link).
• Gerhard Schroeder, current German chancellor
• his office's official biography page (link)

Pages of interesting links, and web sites with interesting content
[a few updates in Dec. 2005] (back to top)

• Women and the Holocaust
• Women's Sexuality in WWII Concentration Camps (oral history project at UC Berkeley)
  (internet archive versions, Dec. 1998-Aug. 2001)
• commented, alphabetical list of Holocaust links (Prof. Al Filreis, English, UPenn)
• list of Holocaust-related web sites (CSU Chico, genocide course by S. Edelman)
• Holocaust Links page (Joyce Meyer, Champaigne-Urbana Jewish Federation)
• Holocaust Denial on Trial: David Irving vs. Penguin Books/Deborah Lipstadt trial (1999-2000)
• Internet Resources on Genocide and Mass Killings from the University of the West of England: Timeline, Documents, Glossary, Functionaries of the Third Reich, War Crimes and Criminals, Genocide and Mass Killing, The Jewish Holocaust, World War II Resources.
• Hypermedia Sourcebook: "Responses to the Holocaust," by Robert Leventhal, Univ. of Virginia

Old Announcements (back to top)

• April 10: Prospectus handout available on-line
• April 21: Index card handout available on-line.
• May 5: Links to examples of student annotated bibliographies (see also Rampolla, p.26) : Chapel on films (link); Landfried on Anne Frank (link), Bergner on Teaching Holocaust to K-4 (link), 33D project on David Irving trial (link)
• May 5: Goleta (and regional) public library search page.
• May 7: today in class we discussed Rampolla's sections on theses, pp. 27-29, 50f. Be sure to review these!
• May 7: Four things due Wed. May 12:
  1. "2 hour assignment" for the Tim Cole chapter on Anne Frank (copies in my office envelope for absent students):
     read for 1 1/2 hours and answer the following questions:
     a. What is his thesis? b. What are his sources (primary and secondary)?
     c. Make an outline of his argument. Bring your answers to class!
  2. Five pages are due: discuss and interpret one (or more) of your primary sources. See Rampolla pp. 5-21, esp. the examples on pages 14-21. You should do a more detailed version of this.
  3. Bring to class one journal article or chapter (photocopy) that is important for your topic. I will review these and your peer reviewer will get them on Friday to read and outline for next week.
• May 20: revised version of peer review handout with updated (4th ed.) page numbers for Rampolla now available.
  This Friday (5/21) I'll return your drafts, and we'll discuss how to prepare for the oral presentations.
• May 25: Oral presentation handout now available
• May 29, 04: Final presentation schedule: Friday 5/28: Michael & Courtney; Wed. 6/2, 11am: Celia, Andy, Joseph, Summer; Wed. 6/2, 3pm [meet in HSSB 4020]: Heather, Kristina, Carlos, Kyle.
  As per the handout, plan in presenting for about 10-15 minutes. With 4 presentations in the 75 min. class period, each can take about 15-20 minutes total.
• May 30, 04: You will be submitting the penultimate drafts to me on 6/2 or 6/3. I will return them to you with comments by Friday. You should then make appointments with me before or during our final exam period (Monday, June 7, 11am) for converting them to html and publishing them on this web site. I'll distribute a "web format" guide in class.
• June 2, 04: Paper index page created. 6/14: Courtney's paper added.
  Uploading appointments: (be sure to submit a bibliography!)
  Fri 6/4: 3pm: Celia.
  Sat 6/5: 12:30 Kristina, 1pm Summer, 1:20 Kyle, 1:45 Carlos.
  Mon. 6/7: 10:30 Andy, 11 Courtney, 11:30 Joseph, 12-2 Heather.
• Nov. 3, 04: Michael's Nietzsche-Hitler paper updated
• Jan. 7, 2005: major website restructuring; some links and images may not be available until I debug. Please notify me if you encounter a dead link.
• March 28, 2005: FINALLY I've converted the remaining 5 papers from Spring 2004 to html and uploaded them. You'll find them on the 133p papers index page: Soudry on Riefenstahl, Frabotta on Hitler Youth, Chapel on Denying the Rape of Nanking, Graf on Oskar Schindler, Magaña on Textbooks 1952-1968, and Feng's 2 Oral Histories.
  (I've also added Ginder: Nazi Art to my 133c projects page.)