[History_students] New Course / Biographical History

[Eric B. Oliver]

Fellow History Majors:

As you may or may not be aware, DePaul has recently initated a program in Gay, 
Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Studies.  This interdisciplinary 
initative necessarily receives the scholarly input of several departments:  
history, women's studies, American studies, English.literature, modern language, 
etc...

Dr. Beth Kelly is offering a course during the December Term that I personally 
find fascinating.  It is entitled "Queer Pioneers" and will deal with a 
biographical history of the 'movers and shakers' of the GBLT? community  roughly 
from Susan B. Anthony to Barney Frank.  The course is listed under the 
departments of GBLTQ Studies, American Studies and Political Science (#394, I 
believe... I'm sure of WMS 394).  

Biographical narrative as a tool of history is presently quite en vogue among 
scholars (thinking specifically of Frank Wcislo's upcoming treatise on pre-
Revolutionay Russia using the personal documents of Sergei Witte).  Any of you 
who would be interested in such a methodological approach to history would be 
STRONGLY encouraged to enroll.  

The course meets M,T,W and Th for 2.5 weeks in december and grants 4 credit 
hours.  Right now the course will be cancelled by the administration if a 
certain enrollment benchmark is not met.  Given the timely nature of the 
course's material AND the benefit in methodological expansion that could be 
opened to you, I would encourage you to consider Dr. Kelly's course with my 
upmost recommendation.  

Please excuse my shameless use of the history student's list for this post; I 
think that such a post was warranted.

Cordially,
Eric Oliver

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After Silence, that which comes closest to 
expressing the inexpresible is music
                         --Huxley
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Eric B. Oliver
DePaul University
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