After earning a BS in physics from the University of Cincinnati, I eventually went back to college, majoring in history. I found my studies of world history and cross-cultural interaction to be at least as useful to my science fiction writing as my physics studies were. I also wrote a number of papers that I'm rather proud of, or at least which are on subject matters I think are worth sharing. I hope you find them educational -- but remember that professors routinely do web searches to check for plagiarism, so no copying, please.
World History: A 100-level survey course, covering global history from the perspective of cross-cultural interactions and global patterns. This was a revelation -- the history education I got in public school was totally Western-biased and incomplete. But a lightweight class, so the papers are pretty lightweight too.
A Boy and His Toys: Gender Relationships in "The Tale of Genji" Okay, it's the world's first novel, it's a great classic of Japanese literature, but Genji's a total creep.
The Interesting Narrative and the Peculiar Institution: Olaudah Equiano's Views on Slavery On the autobiography of a prominent ex-slave and abolitionist.
The Sun Never Sets: European Globalism in Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days Verne was the original hard-SF writer, basing everything on the best scientific understanding of his day, and this is one of his most solidly grounded works. But until I was assigned it in this class, I never realized how much social satire was in this book.
Survivor of the Whirlwind: Evgenia Ginsburg's Memoir of the Stalinist Terror On Journey Into the Whirlwind, a chilling, poignant book from a survivor of the gulags.
Voice of the Oppressed: Portrayal of Quiché Life in Rigoberta Menchú's Manifesto A controversial book, denounced by some as a fraud. But it can be interesting how different cultures define truth differently.
Introduction to Historical Thinking: A tough but rewarding course for teaching the principles of historiography, critical reading of sources and so on. The theme in the year I took it involved warfare and cultural conflict. We covered three books and did three drafts of each essay; I present the final drafts here. Although this was a course for history majors, I was privileged to take it with two theater majors who are now rising stars on Broadway, Justin Bohon and the incomparable Angela Gaylor, who took on this difficult challenge purely for the love of learning and handled it well, being two of only 13 students who made it through to the end.
Ordinary Men: A Mystery Evaluating Christopher Browning's insightful study of how ordinary Germans and Poles could have become part of the Nazi atrocities, as well as Daniel Goldhagen's somewhat less insightful (in my opinion) rebuttals.
Tongue-tied by The Name of War Jill Lepore, in her first book, evaluates a 17th-century conflict between Native Americans and British settlers, and risks crossing over into historical fiction.
Unearthing the Roots of Revolution On Nikki R. Keddie's 1981 survey of the Iranian Revolution. The book is a tough, dry read and underplays religion in favor of economic causes, but it's still informative about the origins of the modern Mideast mess.
Frontiers in World History: A personal favorite, very useful to me as an SF writer. A special topics course exploring the question of just what a frontier is and what happens there, and demolishing a lot of popular myths about frontiers.
Invaders, Allies, Gods: Indigenous Mexican Views of the Spanish Invaders An analysis of Miguel Leon-Portilla's The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico.
Noble Savages: Tacitus' View of Frontier Peoples An analysis of The Agricola and The Germania.
Transformation of Belief Systems on Islamic Frontiers in India and Eastern Europe My final research paper for the course. Also my favorite paper, which taught me a lot about the spread of religions and dispelled a lot of myths.
History of China
Selected Essays I In this course, we were given take-home short essay assignments for our midterms and finals. This set of essays focuses on the foundations of Chinese culture and values.
Selected Essays II Here the focus is on comparisons with the West, and challenging Western assumptions about why China didn't become an industrial or global-imperialist power.
Selected Essays III Modern Chinese history, from Mao to Tiananmen.
Universal Patterns of Belief Transformation in the Development of Chinese Buddhism Something of a spinoff, applying ideas from my "Transformations of Belief Systems" paper to Chinese history.
Self-and-Mutual Criticism in the Fanshen Movement Based on William Hinton's compelling book about the Chinese Communist revolution as it played out in a small rural village. The real tragedy of Maoist China is how a movement with such high ideals went so horribly wrong. In this paper I attempted to offer some insights into why.
Native American History: Since there are few good textbooks on this subject, all our reading materials were scholarly articles. Our formal paper assignments always involved picking two of the articles and comparing them.
Evaluating Calvin Martin's Methodology by Richard White's Parameters Crummy title, but it covers some crucial issues about the questions historians ask, and the danger of asking questions with hidden assumptions that force a desired answer.
Interpreting the Legend: Flores' and Ostler's Approaches to the Bison Problem Two interesting perspectives on the decline of the bison population on the 19th-century American plains, each bringing a different discipline to bear.
Ethnography vs. Historiography in the Study of Tsimshian History Covers some intriguing issues in cross-cultural contact and change, as well as comparing different scholarly perspectives on same.
Culture and Power in the Age of Empire: A seminar about colonialism and imperialism, and the interactions of cultures and identities.
Amrouche's Life Story Examining the memoir of Fadhma Amrouche, an Algerian Berber woman in the French colonial period, and contrasting her perspectives on Algerian women with those of revolutionary writer Frantz Fanon. Shows a view of intercultural contact from the perspective of an outsider to both cultures -- perhaps laying the groundwork for my Mary Kingsley paper (below).
Patting Japan on the Head: American and British Coverage of the Russo-Japanese War Not a favorite of mine, but an interesting look at how even approval can be condescending, and a reminder of how imperialism can come back to bite you.
Other
Human Origins In African History, we were asked to write a paper on human origins based on the material in the textbook, and to include a speculative depiction of what life might have been like for a proto-human community -- making this the paper which gave me the greatest opportunity to exercise my speculative fiction skills. I found the text's material insufficient and inaccurate, so I supplemented it with some other sources.
Definition by Opposition: Factors Underlying Nationalism in South Asia From History of India: My attempt to make sense of the profound ethnic violence that can overtake populations which formerly coexisted peacefully, bringing sociobiology to bear among other theories.
The View from In Between: Mary Kingsley as Cultural Intermediary The research paper for my Senior Seminar. This course kind of threw me for a loop, since I'd been focussing on non-Western history, but the Senior Seminars were always based on American or British history, since the goal was to base a research paper on primary sources, and that meant those sources had to be in a language we could read. I chose the seminar on "Travel, Exploration and Empire" because it came closest to my area of study, and because it was from my "Frontiers in World History" professor. Still, for me it was more like starting from scratch than a culmination of my prior work, so I don't consider this my best paper. But Mary Kingsley was a fascinating lady and a delightful writer.