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Publications in VIVO
 

Fenn, Elizabeth

Professor Emerita/Emeritus

Positions

  • Professor Emerita/Emeritus, History

Research

keywords

  • early American West, Native American history, colonial American history, history of the American Revolution, epidemic disease in American history, Mandan Indians, smallpox, environmental history

Publications

selected publications

Teaching

courses taught

  • HIST 2830 - Disease and Public Health in Global History
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2021 / Spring 2022
    Examines the global history of health and disease from the Paleolithic to the present. Themes and topics vary by semester but may include the co-evolution of humans, microbes, and vectors; food, famine, and nutrition; mental health; contagions such as plague, smallpox, cholera, yellow fever, influenza, HIV, and coronaviruses; cultural, social, medical, and institutional developments; gender, race, and sexuality; and connections between public health and environment, climate, water supply, colonization, globalization, imperialism, migration, and transportation.
  • HIST 3020 - Historical Thinking & Writing
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2022
    The second cornerstone course for history majors centers on the essential skills all historians use. Students will advance their reading, sourcing, and research techniques, hone critical, analytical, and synthetic skills, navigate scholarly discourse, and practice historical writing. As this simultaneously satisfies the College's upper-division writing requirement, all sections involve substantial, regular, and varied writing assignments as well as instruction in methods and the revision process. All topical variations of this course are limited to a maximum of 18 students in order to focus on supporting students as they learn to write - and think - like an historian. Topics will vary by section. Recommended for sophomores or juniors, HIST 3020 may be taken concurrently with, but not prior to, HIST 1800. May be repeated up to 6 total credit hours.
  • HIST 3115 - Seminar in Early American History
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2019 / Spring 2021
    The third, and final, cornerstone course for history majors is a capstone seminar. Capstone seminars are designed for advanced history majors to pull together the skills they have honed in previous classes towards producing historical knowledge about a particular area of interest. This seminar focuses on early American history, and will include readings and discussions in a small seminar setting. These and other class activities and assignments will support the central goal: for each student to develop an individual research project on a topic of their own choosing in relation to early American history. Students will then write a substantial and original research paper based on primary sources. Completion of HIST 3020 is required for history majors to enroll in a senior seminar. May be repeated up to 6 total credit hours. Recommended restriction: History GPA of 2.0 or higher.
  • HIST 4125 - Early American History to 1763
    Primary Instructor - Fall 2021 / Fall 2022
    Explores the colonial era of American history from the pre-Columbian period to the end of the Seven Years' War. Topics include pre-contact Native societies, exploration, European settlement and Native American responses, labor system and the rise of slavery, imperial wars, and the developments in religion, society, politics and culture. Same as HIST 5125.
  • HIST 4326 - Epidemic Disease in US History
    Primary Instructor - Fall 2018 / Fall 2021
    Focuses on the impact of infectious epidemic disease on American history, from smallpox and cholera to influenza, AIDS and Ebola. Addresses early depopulation of the Americas; contagion and social upheaval; interpretations of pestilence; social construction of disease; urbanization; doctors and alternative practitioners; public health; prejudice and infection; the ethics of quarantine; public versus individual interests; and the paradox of prevention.
  • HIST 7257 - Seminar: History of the American Frontier
    Primary Instructor - Fall 2018 / Fall 2022
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Background

awards and honors

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