Volume 5, Fall 2018

Welcome to Volume 5 of the Toro Historical Review! This volume features student contributions from our History 490 and 400 seminars as well as several upper division lecture courses and film reviews from Spring 2018.

History 490 provides students with the opportunity to collectively examine a topic in depth, and independently undertake an original research project utilizing historical skills gained throughout their undergraduate career. Taught by Dr. Murillo, the theme this semester was Modern African History. The papers published here demonstrate the range of skills that students studying Africa’s past must practice. Included in these papers are oral history, translation work, and hands-on archival research. Topics include the history of gender, geopolitics, and immigration/migration from an African Studies perspective.
History 400 provides advanced disciplinary training designed to prepare students to undertake independent historical research. A historiographical essay based on a historical theme or event chosen by the student is the culminating assignment for the course. A strong paper will showcase the skills of collecting and analyzing a large body of scholarship, as well as synthesizing the arguments and contributions of individual historians and/or schools of thought. Volume 5 showcases the work of Dr. Namala’s Spring 2018 students who worked on historiographies of colonial Mexican ethnohistory, in particular native-language driven research of colonial Mexican indigenous communities, as well as Dr. Murillo’s Fall 2017 seminar which focused on historiographies of decolonization in Africa.

In Dr. Johnson’s History 335 course, War and Depression, students use oral histories from the California Odyssey Project at California State University, Bakersfield, to draw conclusions about Okie migration of the Dust Bowl era. While oral histories provide first-hand accounts of events, the important details are often hidden among minutia, and students who do well exhibit tenacity as they sort through pages of transcripts. As part of Dr. Monty’s 20th-century Europe course, History 315, Sharon MacNett examined The Futurist Manifesto and a range of additional primary sources to assess the relationship between Futurism as an artistic movement and Italian fascism. MacNett’s analysis supports the findings of recent scholars who argue that the Futurists – and especially the movement’s founder, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti – embraced the essential tenets of fascist ideology and never wavered in their support for Mussolini’s regime. Finally, in History 376, Film as History, as taught by Andrea Johnson, students examine the role of film in 20th Century American life. Students analyze films from the era, considering context and portrayals of race, class, and gender in the film. In addition, students examine the history of the production of the film and its reception by the American public at the time it was released.

History 490 Senior Seminar