The following courses are new, one-time only, under-appreciated, and/or last-minute additions. We’ll be updating this list, so check back!
We are so pleased to report that we will have a new faculty member joining us in Fall 2020! Prof. Glass (more on him here) will be coming from Princeton, where he has just finished his PhD. History majors will be the first to get a chance to learn from him since his first offering at BC will be a Senior Colloquium. Read on!
Prof. Thomas Murphy S.J., currently at Seattle University, will also be joining our faculty this fall. (More on him soon too!) He will be teaching two electives in Fall 2020:
HIST 2412, The Pacific Northwest
This course concentrates on Roman Catholic practices of slaveholding in colonial and early republican America, with particular attention the Jesuit order’s attempt to build and then support their Georgetown College through slave labor. Topics will include how Catholic pro-slavery thought was justified through reference to Scripture, philosophy, hierarchical authority and lay benefaction. Of particular importance will the Church’s assertion of its right to own slave property as a confirmation of its right to liberty of religious practice, as well as the Jesuits’ preference for selling rather than freeing their slaves when they ended their pursuit of slaveholding in 1838.
HIST 4417, Catholics and Slavery
This course explores a region defined as today including the American states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska, plus the Canadian province and territory of British Columbia and the Yukon. Themes include Indigenous culture: Euro-American colonization; tensions between natural resource extraction and environmental preservation; labor and immigration; race relations; the emergence of United States and Canada as the region’s two nation-states; the relationship of this region with its federal governments and national economies. There will be particular attention to the role of arrives from New England in tying the Northwest to the East Coast of North America.
BCHistory News 