Most years I teach PLSC 36100: Civil War to graduate students; this year is no different. It’s become totally impossible to “represent” the field given the extraordinary amount, and heterogeneity, of civil war research, so the syllabus is increasingly a curated jumping-off point for students’ own research projects. I dumped hundreds of recommended readings into this document back in 2019, which maybe someday I will update; it gives a broader view of the field.
My syllabus certainly has its biases and limits, but hopefully at least gives a meaningful taste of almost every major research approach in the field (it’s weak on formal theory, I know, but there are dozens of excellent formal theorists on my campus to whom I’m happy to point students). Here’s the draft syllabus for Winter 2023; it’s also interesting to see what has and hasn’t changed compared to the first version I taught back in 2010.
Paul Staniland 