HIST 4300:  JUNIOR SEMINAR IN RESEARCH AND WRITING
[Restricted to History Majors]

The Junior Seminar consists of readings and instruction in research methods and writing within the context of a general topic chosen by the instructor.  A relatively small core of common required readings is assigned during the first part of the semester, along with closely supervised writing exercises based on those readings.  A major paper, usually 20 to 25 pages in length, is the chief task in the second half of the semester.

NOTE: Majors are required to take the Junior Seminar during their junior year--not before or after that time. Any exception to this rule must be cleared by the Department Chairperson or the Undergraduate Director.

JUNIOR SEMINAR:
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

HIST 4300-002
Thu 2PM-3:20—138 Dallas Hall
Prof. James Hopkins—356B Dallas Hall—214-768-2977   hopkins@smu.edu

Although the causes of the Spanish Civil War were indigenous to Spain, the struggle became a canvas on which left and right wing passions of the 1930s could be writ large.  Those on the left saw Spain as the country in which fascism would be stopped, and some saw a social revolution taking place.  Those on the right saw the struggle as one against “Godless communism.”  Therefore, the Spanish Civil War engaged ideological passions with a unique fervor.  This seminar will primarily focus on the way in which the Spanish Civil War was perceived by non-Spaniards, both in Europe and the United States.  We will look at the implications for our culture of those who project their political fantasies on a complex historical event which they cannot or will not seek to understand in its own terms.  Others, like George Orwell, well understood the statement by the great Spanish painter, Juan Gris, who said, “If I am not in possession of the abstract, with what am I to control the concrete?  If I am not in possession of the concrete, with what am I to control the abstract.”  By the end of the semester we too will understand what Gris meant.

Tentative readings include: 1) Cecil Eby, Comrades and Commissars; 2) Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls; 3) Andrew Forrest, The Spanish Civil War; 4) George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia; 5) Paul Preston, We Saw Spain Die; 6) James K. Hopkins, Into the Heart of the Fire: The British in the Spanish Civil War; 7) Jules Benjamin, A Student’s Guide to History (on line).