HIST 0150A. History of Capitalism.

Capitalism didn't just spring from the brain of Adam Smith. Its logic is not encoded on human DNA, and its practices are not the inevitable outcome of supply and demand. So how did capitalism become the dominant economic system of the modern world? History can provide an answer by exploring the interaction of culture and politics, technology and enterprise, and opportunity and exploitation from the era of the Atlantic Slave Trade to the 2008 Financial Crisis. HIST 0150 courses introduce students to methods of historical analysis, interpretation, and argument. This class presumes no economics background, nor previous history courses.

HIST 0150B. The Philosophers' Stone: Alchemy From Antiquity to Harry Potter.

Alchemy today conjures Harry Potter or Full Metal Alchemist, not the serious scholarly tradition that captivated Isaac Newton and Carl Jung. We will explore alchemy’s long history, examining how it has endured and adapted to different cultural, social, intellectual, economic, and religious contexts. What did alchemists do? How did they explain their art? And why has alchemy come to represent fraud and folly in some circles and wisdom in others? Students will answer these questions by conducting research in the Hay. HIST 0150 courses introduce students to methods of historical analysis, interpretation, and argument. Presumes no previous history courses.

HIST 0150C. Locked Up: A Global History of Prison and Captivity.

A long history lies behind the millions of men and women locked up today as prisoners, captives and hostages. Beginning in antiquity and ending in the present, this course draws on materials from a variety of cultures across the world to explore incarceration's centuries-old past. In examining the experience and meaning of imprisonment, whether as judicial punishment, political repression, or the fallout of war, the class will ask fundamental questions about liberty as well. History 150 courses introduce students to methods of historical analysis, interpretation and argumentation. This course presumes no previous history courses.

HIST 0150D. Refugees: A Twentieth-Century History.

Refugees are arguably the most important social, political and legal category of the twentieth century. This introductory lecture course locates the emergence of the figure of the refugee in histories of border-making, nation-state formation and political conflicts across the twentieth century to understand how displacement and humanitarianism came to be organized as international responses to forms of exclusion, war, disaster and inequality.
Syllabus link: https://blogs.brown.edu/refugees-20th-century/

HIST 0150F. Pirates.

As long as ships have sailed, pirates have preyed upon them. This course examines piracy from ancient times to present, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean. We will explore questions: How did piracy evolve over time? Where, why, and how did people become pirates, and what (if anything) made them different from other seafarers? How is piracy related to other historical processes, notably imperialism and nation-building? What explains the resurgence of piracy in the twenty-first century? Why have pirates become the stuff of legend, and how accurately are they portrayed in books and films?

HIST 0150G. History of Law: Great Trials.

Through discussion of a variety of trials spanning more than two millennia, this course will probe the nature of demonstrative and transitional justice, the relationship between ideology and law in different societies and time periods, and how trials affirm or contest legal personhood, criminal responsibility, and social marginalization. Cases to be covered include: Socrates, Jesus Christ, the French Revolutionary Terror, the Amistad case, the Dreyfus Affair, the fictional Japanese Rashomon trial, the Stalinist show trials, and the trials of Charles Manson, O.J. Simpson, Nelson Mandela, Dilma Rousseff, and Saddam Hussein (to name a few).

HIST 0150H. Foods and Drugs in History.

What we consume connects us to the worlds of both nature and culture. Bodily and socially, “you are what you eat,” but if your well-being suffers, you often seek out other ingestible substances. In many times and places, changing what you eat is thought to be healing, while in other times and places drugs – either remedial or recreational – are thought to be distinct and more immediately restorative. Few human interactions with the larger world are more important or interesting than how comestibles and medicines have been discovered, mixed, transformed, distributed, and how those processes have changed us.

HIST 0150I. The Making of the Modern World.

The modern world is often seen as a triumph of liberal enlightenment thought, scientific discovery, and economic progress. But it is also a product of settler colonialism, imperial expansion, and massive waves of population displacement that reorganized human societies along racialized and capitalist modes of inclusion and exclusion. This course seeks to understand the making of our current world from the conquest of the “Americas" and the slave trade to industrialization and climate change. It also considers lessons from the struggles by native, enslaved, colonized, and displaced populations for a more just, peaceful, and greener future.

HIST 0150J. The Ocean in Global History.

This course examines how the ocean and its denizens have influenced and been shaped by diverse social, material, political, and cultural factors across different spaces and chronologies. We will consider how historical actors across global history have approached the ocean and its creatures as sources of sustenance and power, cosmology and knowledge, conveyance and death. We will weigh, too, how adopting an oceanic perspective can open new ways of understanding the past, present, and future of our planet and its inhabitants. Topics considered include contemporary and historic Indigenous seafaring traditions and maritime subjectivities across Moana/Pacific and other oceanic basins; Atlantic seaborne empires, piracy, human trafficking in the age of sail; the establishment of oceanography as a scholarly discipline; the evolution of maritime transportation infrastructure under global capitalism; the political ecology of a warming ocean in the era of climate crisis.

HIST 0150L. Ecological Imperialism.

Empires have played important roles in transforming the earth’s environments for over two millennia, conquering land and transforming its ecosystems and societies to make them more profitable. This course will examine how European and other empires have reorganized the landscapes of conquered regions from the ancient empires of Rome and China to the Anglo-American empire, focusing in particular on Asia, Africa and Latin America.

HIST 0202. African Experiences of Empire.

This is a "flipped" course on sub-Saharan Africa from the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries. It presupposes no knowledge of Africa and serves as an introduction to the continent. It focuses on daily life, families, and popular culture. Students will analyze change, question perspectives, and imagine life, and question what "Africa" was during the period of European imperialism. Most readings are primary sources, which include photographs, songs, and oral histories. The course is "flipped"; students' first introduction to the content comes before class meetings through the text and multi-media sources. Class meetings are dedicated to discussion and exercises, including role-playing.

HIST 0203. Modern Africa: From Empire to Nation-State.

This course examines the major historical developments in Africa from 1945 to the present and pays special attention to the diversity of experiences within the vast continent. The first part focuses on Africans’ varied responses to the waning European imperial project and explores different ways in which African nationalist leaders and everyday people challenged colonial administrations to ultimately achieve their independence. The second part of the class investigates the consequences and opportunities of decolonization, including questions of political legitimacy, state-building, structural adjustment programs and international aid, human rights, and civil conflicts.

HIST 0212. Histories of East Asia: China.

China's ascendancy as a global economic power in recent decades has been regarded by many as a reclaiming of its former glory. In introducing the history of China from earliest times to the present, this course aims to provide an understanding of the making and remaking over millennia of what we call Chinese civilization, with its changes, contingencies, and continuities, its various claims to greatness, and its many recurring challenges. This course is open to all students and assumes no prior knowledge of Chinese culture, history, or language. Readings consist of both a textbook and relevant primary sources.

HIST 0214. Histories of East Asia: Japan.

This is a course for students who have always been curious about Japan but haven't had an opportunity to explore that interest fully, for anyone in search of a better understanding of the historical contexts that shaped Japan's complex relationships with China, Korea and the West, and for all those who wish to broaden their exposure to the histories of East Asia. Open to all students, this course assumes no prior knowledge of Japanese culture, history, or language.

HIST 0215. Modern Korea: Contending with Modernity.

This course examines the extraordinarily rapid revolution of Korea from isolated, agrarian society into a culturally modern, industrialized, and democratic nation that is an important actor on the world stage. It also will investigate how a non-Western society generates its own inspiration for human relations, social structure, political and cultural values. Includes coverage of North Korea.

HIST 0218. The Making of Modern East Asia.

This course examines Asia in the shaping of the modern world, from competing definitions of empires circa 1800 to the rise of the notion of the twenty-first as a "Pacific Century." It investigates the definition(s) of Asia as a world region, explores transnational interactions and emphasizes Asians as historical actors via written, visual and aural sources. Events are placed in the context of key historical paradigms, including varying definitions of modernity, the rise of the nation-state, birth of mass politics, new mechanisms of war, the language of self-determination, changing views of gender, shifting types of media and consumption, etc.

HIST 0228A. War, Tyranny, and Peace in Modern Europe.

This course explores the relationship between war, culture, and society in modern Europe. The two world wars changed the political, social, and cultural landscape of Europe, and by extension, of the rest of the world, not least the United States. We will not delve into the military history of these vast conflicts; instead, we will examine how the experience of total war remolded European understanding and practices of memory and commemoration, culture and representation, humanity and civilization, utopia and revolution, catastrophe and identity. We will read influential scholarly texts and literary works, and watch important contemporary films.

HIST 0232. Clash of Empires in Latin America.

Examines Latin America as the scene of international rivalry from the 16th to the 19th century. Topics include comparative colonization, the transatlantic slave trade, privateering and piracy in the Caribbean, and the creation of an "Atlantic world." P

HIST 0233. Colonial Latin America.

Colonial Latin America, from Columbus's voyage in 1492 to Independence in the nineteenth century, was the creation of three peoples: Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans. Spanish and Portuguese conquerors brought with them the world of the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Renaissance. Native Americans lived there already, in rich empires and hunter-gatherer bands. Africans came as slaves from Senegal, Nigeria, Congo and Angola, bringing old traditions and creating new ones. These diverse peoples blended together to form a new people. This was a place of violence, slavery and oppression -- but also of art, faith, new societies, new ideas. P

HIST 0234. Modern Latin America.

This course is an introduction to the history of modern Latin America. Through lectures, discussions, shared readings, we will explore major themes in the past two hundred years of Latin American history, from the early nineteenth-century independence movements to the recent “Left Turn” in Latin American politics. Some of the topics we will examine include the racial politics of state-formation; the fraught history of U.S.-Latin American relations; the cultural politics of nationalism; how modernity was defined in relation to gender and sexuality; and the emergence of authoritarian regimes and revolutionary mobilizations, and the role of religion in shaping these processes.

HIST 0243. Modern Middle East Roots: 1492 to the Present.

A robust introduction to Middle East history from early-modern to contemporary times. We begin in Reconquista Spain with the expulsion of Iberia’s longstanding Muslim and Jewish populations, before journeying to the eastern Mediterranean at the Ottoman Empire’s zenith. In the “long” 19th-20th centuries, we explore modern tensions shaping this amorphous but pivotal region, including: colonialism, nationalism, and Islamism; water, fossil fuels, and information infrastructures; constitutionalism, authoritarianism, and “street” politics; and interventions by the US, USSR/Russia, and local powers. Emphasizing socioeconomic, legal, and environmental history perspectives, our goal is to unearth the roots of conflict and other conditions shaping today’s “Mideast.”

HIST 0244. Understanding the Middle East: 1800s to the Present.

This course is an introduction to the history of the modern Middle East from the mid-19th C to the present. Readings and topics are structured chronologically, and emphasize the key events and turning points in the political and economic history of the region. The goal of the course is to understand how the Middle East, as it is today, has been shaped by the events of the past.

HIST 0246. The Ottoman Empire and the Modern Middle East.

The Middle East is the only region of land to connect three continents, and is (arguably) the most controversial to discuss, or even define. Assuming no prior knowledge of a region that persistently captures headlines, this course provides a robust introduction to modern Middle East history, with two parts: (1) a brief history of the early-modern Ottoman Empire, from the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 to imperial collapse in WWI; and (2) the dramatic remaking of Southern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and North Africa into a new “Middle East/MENA” region from Ottoman partition to present times. Throughout, we explore the pivotal role of the Middle East—and narratives of its past—from a variety of “3D” perspectives, including geopolitics, water, and fossil fuels; religion/spirituality, law, and family life; art, literature, music, and sports; and nationalism, militarism, humanitarianism, and environmentalism.

HIST 0247. Civilization, Empire, Nation: Competing Histories of the Middle East.

The “Middle East” is a recent invention. 100 years ago, virtually none of the states currently populating the region’s map existed. This course considers how historians (and others) have used the concepts of civilization, empire, and nation to construct competing narratives about this pivotal region’s past from the rise of Islam to the present. Since facts acquire meanings through interpretative frameworks, we ask: What is privileged and what is hidden in these narratives? And what would the history of this region look like if we could see it through the eyes of the peoples who have long lived there?

HIST 0248. 'Neither of the East nor West': The Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire (1299—1923) was the longest lived, most powerful, and most controversial Muslim dynasty in history. From Turkish nomads in Asia to multiethnic empire straddling three continents, the Ottomans became the premier power of the early-modern Mediterranean and last to single-handedly govern most of today’s “Middle East.” Yet, the empire’s formation and evolution—fusing Persianate, Mongol, and Roman heritages, as well as Muslim, Christian, and Jewish populaces—remain little understood. Navigating multiple regions and eras, we’ll explore the contours of Ottoman history—from medieval beginnings to modern legacies, including those surviving the empire’s partition and demise after WWI.

HIST 0250. American Exceptionalism: The History of an Idea.

For four centuries, the theme of America having a special place in the world has dominated American politics and culture, though many have questioned or challenged American distinctiveness. This course examines articulations and critiques of American exceptionalism, using sources from American history and literature, from comparative history and literature, and from modern U.S. culture and politics. Although it offers an introduction to American history, it is different from a traditional high school or introductory college course because of its thematic focus and its emphasis on U.S. history in a global context. Intended for students in any discipline and in any year at Brown.

HIST 0252. The American Civil War.

This course, covering the period roughly from 1820-1865 and focusing mostly on 1860-1865, examines the origins of the Civil War, the war itself, and preliminary efforts at reconstruction during wartime. The class meetings and readings will focus on the transformation wrought by the war, investigating in particular certain issues relevant to current affairs: 1) enslavement, emancipation, and struggles for equality; 2) sectionalism, secession, and insurrection; 3) the role of law in the prosecution and resolution of war; and 4) the role of the Civil War in American popular culture and politics. There are no prerequisites--the course is accessible to students at all levels--but some knowledge of U.S. history might be useful.

HIST 0253. Religion, Politics, and Culture in America, 1865 - Present.

Religion has played an undeniable role in the contemporary American cultural landscape. This course lends some perspective on the present by investigating the various and, at times, surprising role religion has played in history in the shaping of American culture from 1865 to the present.

HIST 0253A. Colonial America: A Global History.

Colonial America was more than just the original 13 colonies that later became the United States. Those North American colonies were perched on the edge of a wide and vast world of trade, commerce, and migration that extended into the Caribbean, South America, Africa, and into the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Native Americans, Africans, Spanish, Dutch, French, Portuguese, and Asians were all an important part of this world. Join us on an exploration using primary and secondary sources, videos, and objects that reveal the globalized world of early America. Course is open to all students; there are no prerequisites. P

HIST 0254. Reconstruction and the Politics of Violence.

Examines Reconstruction (conventionally, 1863-1877, and often called the first civil rights revolution in the United States), and the political violence used to combat it. The course places the events of this period in the broader American history of civil rights and the American penchant for political violence, with particular attention to antebellum mobbing, the Civil War, and Jim Crow lynching, but also looking at other forms of political violence such as Native American dispossession and labor unrest.

HIST 0255A. Mexican American History.

This course provides a comprehensive historical examination of ethnic Mexicans in the United States. Students first address Native American societies prior to European colonization in order to understand the historical antecedents of Mexican people in the US. Proceeding chronologically, students then examine how the Spanish colonial era, Mexican Independence, and other major events during the nineteenth century shaped the “Mexican American” experience. We also explore the history of Mexican community in the U.S. during the American conquest of the Southwest, the twentieth century immigration experience, and the development of diverse Mexican American communities after 1900. By utilizing primary and secondary sources, we will explore major questions, theory, and research methods pertinent to Mexican American & Chicano/a/x history, including, immigration, xenophobia, ethnic identity formation, gender, articulations of race and labor in urban and rural settings, political activism, and urban cultures.

HIST 0256. Introduction to Latinx History.

This course provides a comprehensive historical examination of Latinx people in the United States. Students will explore major questions, theory, and research methods pertinent to the historical narratives of Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Dominican Americans, Cuban Americans, and Central Americans. Major topics of study include immigration, ethnic identity formation, social and political activism, labor, and articulations of race, gender, and culture in urban and rural settings. This course ultimately demonstrates how the Latinx experience is vital to our understanding of the social, economic, and cultural history of the United States.

HIST 0257. Modern American History: New and Different Perspectives.

Rather than a survey, this course uses specific episodes and events to reveal different modes of analysis. Examples of questions are: What do gender perspectives tell us about men on the frontier and women in dance halls? What is the importance of baseball to American culture? How do a historian and a lawyer differ in their analysis of a sensational crime case? How can we understand why the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan? How did scandals in television and popular music signal an end to American innocence? How has the Baby Boom generation altered American society? And more.

HIST 0259. Labor, Land and Culture: A History of Immigration in the U.S..

Current debates surrounding immigration and immigrants in U.S. society focus largely on the recent past, while simultaneously reiterating long-standing ideas and narratives. This course will equip students to better understand the genesis of such debates, including ideological, economic, and social factors, by exploring the history of immigration to what is now the United States. Sources from popular culture will aid students' insight into the ways in which American Exceptionalism, national identity, and constructions of “otherness” are woven into discourses regarding immigration, and further considers the ways in which “immigrant” is constructed as distinct from histories of colonialism, enslavement, and refuge.

HIST 0270A. From Fire Wielders to Empire Builders: Human Impact on the Global Environment before 1492.

Environmental problems are often considered a modern issue, but people have been transforming their surroundings for millennia. This course is an introduction to the study of premodern environmental history that includes case studies from around the globe. We will begin with foraging people burning landscapes and then study how farmers came to build their own agricultural ecosystems. We will study how the expansion of commerce and the growth of political organizations vastly increased the ability of our species to transform environments. Since this is a heavily interdisciplinary field that depends on a wide variety of sources, the course will include primary source readings from scientific and archaeological articles and premodern texts. P

HIST 0270B. From the Columbian Exchange to Climate Change: Modern Global Environmental History.

Environmental stories are constantly in the news, from weird weather to viral outbreaks to concerns about extinction and fracking. In this course, we put current events in the context of the past 500 years, exploring how climate, plants, animals, and microbiota – not just humans –acted as agents in history. From imperialism to the industrial revolution and from global capitalism to environmental activism, we will examine how nature and culture intermingled to create the modern world. This is an introduction to environmental history and assumes no prior courses.

HIST 0273A. The First Globalization: The Portuguese in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

This class surveys history of Portuguese empire in Asia, Africa, and Brazil from fifteenth to early nineteenth centuries. Portugal pioneered the European expansion in the fourteenth century, laying the groundwork for several historical phenomena that defined modernity - the formation of colonial coastal enclaves in Africa and Asia, the colonization of the Americas, and the beginning of large-scale trade across the Atlantic and Indian oceans. The class analyzes the economic, religious and technological factors behind Portugal's pioneering role in European expansion. We focus on patterns of socio-cultural and religious interaction between Portuguese and native peoples in Asia, Africa, Brazil. P

HIST 0276. A Global History of the Atomic Age.

We live in the atomic age. From 1945 to the foreseeable future, atomic weapons and nuclear energy have had (and will continue to have) a tremendous effect on global politics, the environment, and everyday life around the world. This course introduces students to three themes in this broader history: first, we examine the origins of nuclear proliferation and the global arms race; second, we explore cultural responses to the atomic age; third, we juxtapose the excitement over the unlimited promise of nuclear energy with the slow catastrophes that accompanied weapons development, the nuclear industry, and waste storage.

HIST 0276B. Science and Capitalism.

We will explore the longstanding relationship between science and commerce from the 17th century to our own asking when the modern notion of science as a disinterested pursuit of objective truth took root. We will also explore how knowledge of the natural world has been shaped by personal, financial, and other kinds of self-interest in a number of diverse contexts ranging from Galileo’s invention of the telescope in Renaissance Italy to to the patenting of genetically engineered organisms in today's world, paying special attention to the diverse mechanisms that have been devised to guard against fraud and disinformation.

HIST 0285A. Modern Genocide and Other Crimes against Humanity.

This lecture course explores genocide and other crimes against humanity across the world during the 20th century. We will discuss the origins of modern genocide in the transition to modernity and subsequent conceptualizations of this phenomenon; review examples of colonial, imperial, racial, communist, anti-communist, and post-colonial genocides; discuss war crimes and other mass crimes perpetrated by authoritarian regimes; and consider policies of mass deportation and ethnic cleansing. This course will conclude with a discussion of attempts by the international community to prevent and punish genocide along with various ways in which genocide has been commemorated or denied.

HIST 0286A. History of Medicine I: Medical Traditions in the Old World Before 1700.

People have always attempted to promote health and prolong life, and to ameliorate bodily suffering. Those living in parts of Eurasia also developed textual traditions that, together with material remains, allow historians to explore their medical practices and explanations, including changes in their traditions, sometimes caused by interactions with other peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa. We'll introduce students to major medical traditions of the Old World to 1700, with emphasis on Europe, and explore some reasons for change. A knowledge of languages and the social and natural sciences is welcome not required. P

HIST 0286B. History of Medicine II: The Development of Scientific Medicine in Europe and the World.

From the 18th century onward, Western medicine has claimed universal validity due to its scientific foundations, relegating other kinds of medicine to the status of "alternative" practices. The course therefore examines the development of scientific medicine in Europe and elsewhere up to the late 20th century, and its relationships with other medical ideas, practices, and traditions. Students with a knowledge of languages and the social and natural sciences are welcome but no prerequisites are required.

HIST 0505. Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

This class deals with the History of transatlantic slave trade by emphasizing how Africa affected and was affected by the largest forced migration in the History of humankind. The class will engage key debates in the historiography of the slave trade, such as whether the trade underdeveloped Africa, the connection between the trade and the rise of coastal kingdoms in West Africa, and African resistance/cooperation with the slave trade. P

HIST 0510A. Shanghai in Myth and History.

“Fishing village”, “Paris of the East”, or “a waking dream where everything I could already imagine had been taken to its extreme?” In an iconic role, Marlene Dietrich bragged that “it took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily,” but the local song “Shanghai by Night” retorted, “To look at her/Smiling face/Who would know that she’s troubled inside?” We will examine why Shanghai has gripped the imaginations of so many, placing the material history of the city alongside dream and image, focusing on the four topics of colonialism, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and class.

HIST 0520A. Athens, Jerusalem, and Baghdad: Three Civilizations, One Tradition.

We examine core beliefs of early Greek, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic civilizations that form the basis of Western thought. Serving similar ideological purpose in the pre-modern world as have political and economic theories for the modern world, religion and philosophy defined individual lives and collective identities. We focus on the manner of appropriation and modification of thought from one culture to another in order to appreciate that there is far more similarity than difference in belief systems among what are today viewed as separate, even contesting, cultures. Enrollment limited to 20 first year students. Instructor permission required. P

HIST 0521A. Christianity in Conflict in the Medieval Mediterranean.

Students in this class will learn about medieval history by taking on roles, informed by classic texts, in elaborate games set in the past. Drawing on the innovative “Reacting to the Past” curriculum, this class explores two dramatic moments in medieval history: the debate about Christian belief held at Nicaea in 325 and the deliberations about crusading held at Acre in 1148. Students will adhere to the intellectual beliefs of the medieval figures they have been assigned to play, and will learn skills—speaking, writing, critical thinking, leadership, and teamwork—in order to prevail in difficult and complicated situations. P

HIST 0521M. The Holy Grail and the Historian's Quest for the Truth.

Dan Brown's wildly successful novel The Da Vinci Code has recently given a feminist twist to an enduringly popular medieval legend also captured in big-screen antics of Monty Python and Indiana Jones: the quest for the Holy Grail. Beginning with Brown's novel and other modern representations of the search for the Grail then turning back to texts from the Middle Ages, this seminar will unravel the truth - or truths - behind the legend. One central question will be how historians can use legends to understand the cultures they study. Instructor permission required. P

HIST 0522G. An Empire and Republic: The Dutch Golden Age.

Between about 1580 and 1690, a new nation emerged in Europe that became a bastion of liberty, ideas in ferment, fine art, military power, science and technology, and global economic reach: the Dutch Republic. A nation that thought of itself as peaceful, yet was constantly at war; as Protestant, yet was composed of people of many faiths; as personally aspirational, yet derived much wealth from the conquest and slavery of others. Its people and institutional arrangements greatly influenced Britain and America on their paths to power, too. Its rise and eclipse may be instructive.. Enrollment limited to 19 first-year students. P

HIST 0522N. Reason, Revolution and Reaction in Europe.

First year seminar designed to introduce students to the study of history through a focused look at the French Revolution. It will be divided into two very different parts. The first part will be organized as a traditional history seminar in which we explore together the eighteenth-century developments that preceded the outbreak of the French Revolution. In the second half of the class, students will be assigned different roles in order to re-enact the discussions in the National Assembly that, from 1791 to its collapse in 1792, tried to create a constitution for the new French Nation. P

HIST 0522O. What is Enlightenment?.

What is the Enlightenment? And why does it matter today? This First-Year Seminar introduces students to a crucial historical epoch that reinterpreted the past – with searing critiques of certain European philosophical and religious traditions – and became a flashpoint for the future, causing debates and controversies well into the 20th century – and beyond. Drawing on a range of approaches and disciplines, we will examine the social and cultural foundations of Enlightenment thought in Europe and throughout the non-European world, including segments on the origins of anthropology, Orientalism, critiques of imperialism and slavery, encyclopedism and the rise of print, as well as science, music, art, literature, and philosophy.

HIST 0523A. The Holocaust in Historical Perspective.

The course will examine the history and historiography of the Holocaust from early accounts to recent reconstructions of the origins, implementation, and aftermath of the "Final Solution." We will also analyze documents, testimonies, memoirs, trial records, and various forms of representations and commemorations of the Shoah. Enrollment limited to 19 first year students.

HIST 0523B. State Surveillance in History.

How and why do states watch their citizens? This course explores historical practices of state surveillance from the perspective of both the “watchers” and the “watched.” Special emphasis will be given to twentieth-century Europe, but examples from other parts of the world and the US will also be featured in the readings. Some of the readings will be primary sources: memoirs, diaries, surveillance files. Other sources will include films and short fiction and some scholarly pieces on the workings of state security and secret police organizations.

HIST 0523M. History of Fascism.

What is fascism—both in theory and in practice—and what remains of it a century after the establishment of the first fascist regime in Italy? This course will explore the social, cultural, and intellectual origins of fascism, the rise of fascist movements in Europe in the early to mid-20th century, the politics and policies of fascist parties and regimes—including Germany, Italy, Iberia, in the Balkans, and in the Baltic States—and transnational links to the Americas, Asia, and Africa. This course will conclude with considerations of anti-fascism in the postwar world as well as the legacies of fascism in contemporary far right politics.

HIST 0523O. The Academic as Activist.

Since the late nineteenth century, the modern research university has struggled with questions about When is the researcher participating in engaged scholarship? When does engagement suggest, instead, a lack of objectivity? How have economists, anthropologists, biologists, and historians tried to contribute to the common good, and where have their efforts broken barriers of privilege, and when have their efforts contributed to further oppression? This seminar will look at debates over the role of academics in political life. Topics may include: Fabian socialism, libertarianism and development economics, pan-African movements, and the Green Revolution.

HIST 0523P. The First World War.

On the eve of the First World War, many Europeans cheered for a “war to end all wars.” It achieved nothing of the like, instead inaugurating a century of war and unthinkable destruction. This seminar explores the history of the first truly global conflict, examining its origins, its course, its aftermath, and how it might help us better understand our own world today. A broad set of primary sources, from soldiers’ diaries to rationing cards, artwork, and diplomatic cables, forms the basis for discussion. Designed as an introduction to historical inquiry and writing.

HIST 0535A. Atlantic Pirates.

This seminar explores piracy in the Atlantic from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. We will examine everyday life on pirate vessels; the pirates' role in emerging colonial societies and economies; the complex links between piracy, imperialism, and nation-building; and the image of pirates as both villains and figures of legend. Enrollment limited to 19 first year students. P

HIST 0535B. Conquests.

What does “conquest” mean? How does it take place, and how is it experienced by both the invaders and the invaded? Drawing upon both primary and secondary sources, this seminar explores how conquest shaped the region we now know as Spanish America. We will begin with the great pre-Columbian empires of the Aztecs and Incas, and then turn to Spanish expeditions in the sixteenth century. The course will encompass specific moments of encounter (such as the Spanish capture of the Inca emperor Atahualpa at Cajamarca), as well as the broader implications of forging a new political and social order. P

HIST 0537A. Popular Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean.

From tango to plastic surgery, Donald Duck to reggaeton, this course places popular culture at the center of modern Latin American and Caribbean history. How, we will ask, did popular culture reflect and shape struggles over national belonging? How did foreign cultural products come to bear on international relations and transnational flows? In what contexts has culture served as a vehicle of resistance to dominant ideologies and systems of power? Far from a mere "diversion," popular culture instead offers a compelling lens onto the relationship between state and society in Latin America and beyond.

HIST 0537B. Tropical Delights: Imagining Brazil in History and Culture.

Examines the many ways that Brazilians and foreigners have understood this vast continent-size country, ranging from early European explorers' anxieties about Cannibalism to modern images of the Amazonian rainforest, Rio De Janeiro's freewheeling Carnival celebrations, and the array of social movements mobilizing for social justice. Through an examination of historical sources, literature, movies, and popular culture, this seminar will consider how multiple images and projections of Brazil have shaped national and international notions about the country. Reserved for First Year students. Enrollment limited to 19.

HIST 0540F. Women in the Middle East, 7th-20th C.: Patriarchal Visions, Revolutionary Voices.

This course provides an historical approach to women’s lives, status, and perceptions. It focuses on women in the Middle East, from the seventh century emergence of Islam to the twentieth century revolutions and struggle for new identities. It examines the contested roles of women in society and the ways women were culturally crafted. In particular, we will discuss the modes by which women’s lives were narrated (by themselves and others); women’s use of the “patriarchal bargain” to deal with the shift from so-called “traditional” to so-called “modern” culture; and the encounter between “Eastern” and “Western” societies.

HIST 0550A. Object Histories: The Material Culture of Early America.

History is not just about people; it is also about things! Come explore the world of early America through the lens of objects--boats, dresses, plows, houses, wagons, watches, silver cups, wigs, blankets, land, gardens, hammers, desks--and the cultures that produced and consumed them. As a first year seminar, this course is designed to engagingly introduce students to the basic concepts of historical study. We will take several field trips to local historical sites, both on and off campus. Our primary focus will be specific objects and their contexts and histories. Enrollment limited to 19 first year students. P

HIST 0551A. Abraham Lincoln: Historical and Cultural Perspectives.

This seminar uses life, legacy, myth of Abraham Lincoln to explore central themes such as frontier in early republic, nature of political leadership, law/legal culture, and emergence of sectionalism, slavery, antislavery, Civil War. Frequent short writing assignments and research investigations allow students in-depth explorations of Lincoln’s works, the writings of his contemporaries, and modern non-fiction, fiction, and film. The course enables us to consider two larger themes: 1) the relationship between memory and history; and 2) the function of history in modern society. The course has no prerequisites and does not presuppose special knowledge of American history.

HIST 0552A. A Textile History of Atlantic Slavery.

This class explores the experiences, politics, and cultures of enslaved African and African-descended people through clothing and fashion. As a historical source, textiles reveal things that might otherwise remain obscure in the documentary record. Students will engage material culture methodologies to consider the multiple stories that might be told through a particular fabric or garment. The course will explore recent scholarship about slavery in the Caribbean, South America, and particularly the United States to recognize the role of clothing and textiles in enslaved people’s concurrent struggles for self-liberation and self-fashioning in the face of horrific violence. This course presumes no background knowledge in African American history or material culture studies. And while students are not expected to have crafting expertise, such knowledge (e.g., weaving, sewing, knitting, dyeing) is certainly welcome as we undertake experiential research into various fiber arts.

HIST 0555B. Robber Barons.

Today, the United States looks a lot like it did at the turn of the 20th century. Much like it is now, America's economy at that time saw tremendous growth interrupted by periodic financial crises. Moreover, both are periods of immense inequality. Whereas we have the one per cent, the late 19th century witnessed a small group of capitalists amass unprecedented fortunes, which provided immense political power. In this class, we will explore what the lives of these “robber barons” can tell us about the role of economic privilege in shaping America’s social, cultural, and political history.

HIST 0556A. Sport in American History.

This course covers the relationship of sports to aspects of American culture since 1900. Topics include gender, race, amateurism, professionalism, intercollegiate athletics, and sports heroes. Enrollment limited to 19 first year students.

HIST 0556B. Inequality and American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century.

"Inequality in America rose, fell, and rose sharply again over the 20th century. Why were the early decades of the century so unequal? How did working and middle-class Americans gain a greater share of wealth and why did it these gains later slip away? How truly egalitarian were the mid-century decades? We will examine the rise of corporations, the New Deal, deindustrialization, labor, housing, and the economics of race and gender that weave through them all. Students will come away from the class able to link global economic trends with the intimate everyday experiences of inequality in America.

HIST 0557A. Slavery and Historical Memory in the United States.

How has America chosen to remember and forget the enslavement of millions of its own people? What are appropriate ways to acknowledge slavery in monuments, museum exhibitions, film, literature, and public policy? By approaching these questions through a wide range of visual and textual sources, we will explore the indeterminate space between history and memory. Enrollment limited to 19 first year students.

HIST 0557B. Slavery, Race, and Racism.

This seminar will address the history of race and racism as it relates to the history of slavery in America. We will trace the emergence of slavery in the New World, with a heavy emphasis on slavery in the U.S. South. The course is broad in scope, beginning with the emergence of the slave trade and concluding with a look forward to the ways that the history of slavery continues to impact the way race structures our lives today. In short, this course provides an introduction to slavery studies and to the history of race in America.

HIST 0557C. Narratives of Slavery.

This course will uncover the history of the slave trade, the labor regimes of slavery in the Caribbean and North America, and the rise of the Cotton Kingdom through the voices of the very people who lived through it: enslaved people themselves. We will read slave narratives, court documents, abolitionist treaties, oral histories of formerly enslaved people, and fictional accounts produced in the period. We will give special attention the ways that different kinds of historical sources-different types of narratives-shape what we know and how we know it in the history of slavery.

HIST 0557D. World of Walden Pond: Transcendentalism in the Age of Reform.

World of Walden Pond examines the 19th century phenomenon of Transcendentalism: America’s most romanticized social, religious, philosophical, and literary movement. Focusing especially on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller, we’ll examine Transcendentalism in the age of reform and evaluate how a small group of individuals responded to and help shape abolition, feminism, and environmentalism. The central problem Transcendentalists wrestled with will be our focus, too: how to reconcile a desire for individualism with the need for collective action.

HIST 0557F. The US in the World.

From the first European settlements in America to the Trump Presidency, the United States has been a nexus of the worldwide movement of people, ideas, and goods that we call “globalization.” A global perspective is therefore crucial to understanding myriad aspects of the country’s history, from revolutionary warfare, to state-building, to abolition of the slave trade, to U.S. contributions to universal human rights. Drawing on a variety of primary and secondary sources, including literature and films, this seminar traces the transformation of the United States from a settler-colonial society into a marginal Atlantic state and, following WWII, a global superpower.

HIST 0558B. History of American Feminism.

This first-year seminar will introduce students to the history of women and gender in the 18th, 19th, and 20th c. United States. Beginning with the question, what is feminism?, we will encounter original sources and scholarship about who women were, what they were up against, and what they wanted. We will thus take “women” as a contingent category that changed over time often in relation to categories such as: race, reproduction, violence, protest, work, and queerness. This course will introduce students to gender history and feminist theory, as well as to the skills and habits of historians across fields.

HIST 0558C. Latinx Social Movement History.

This course examines the history of Latinx social movements and politics during the 20th century into the present moment. Students will learn how various Latinx groups have organized around issues of race, ethnicity, labor, class, immigration, sports, gender, sexuality, citizenship, reproductive rights, and education. We will explore how these groups have utilized social and political organizing to make demands for social justice and equality. By utilizing primary and secondary sources, students will explore major questions, theory, and research methods pertinent to the historical narratives of Latinx people. Students will closely examine the legacy of these social movements and their implications for present-day politics and organizing.

HIST 0559A. Culture and U.S. Empire.

How have U.S. policymakers obtained public consent for their foreign policies? What sorts of ideas expressed in U.S. popular culture and public discourse have helped convince enough Americans that their nation's foreign policies were wise and just? How have ideas expressed in American culture supported and critiqued U.S. empire from within? In this seminar, we will examine the relationship of American culture to the U.S. imperial project by looking at how cultural narratives about race, gender, sexuality, class mobility, and American exceptionalism have not only shaped Americans’ interactions with other peoples, but have also rationalized the spread of U.S. power.

HIST 0559B. Asian Americans and Third World Solidarity.

As historian Vijay Prashad puts it, “The Third World was not a place. It was a project.” During the 20th century struggles against colonialism, the peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America believed that another world was possible. Here, too, in the United States, minorities and their allies dreamed of dignity, democracy, and justice. Looking through the experiences of Asian Americans, this course examines the domestic freedom movements in the context of global decolonization. Topics include: campus activism, immigration, capitalist labor regimes, neocolonalism, cultural hegemony, and Afro-Asian connections.

HIST 0574A. The Silk Road, Past and Present.

The Silk Road has historically been the crossroad of Eurasia; since the third-century BCE it has linked the societies of Asia—East, Central, and South—and Europe and the Middle East. The exchange of goods, ideas, and peoples that the Silk Road facilitated has significantly shaped the polities, economies, belief systems, and cultures of many modern nations: China, Russia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and India. This course explores the long history (and the mythologies or imaginations) of the Silk Road in order to understand how the long and complex pasts of the regions it touches are important in the age of globalization.

HIST 0576A. The Arctic: Global History from the Dog Sled to the Oil Rig.

The Arctic is regularly in the media, thanks to climate change. This course examines the long history of human thinking about and habitation in the far north before and during the era of global warming. Focusing on how people valued, survived, and made the arctic home, topics range from whaling, the importance of dogs, cultural imaginaries and colonialism to capitalist and communist arctics, the meaning of sea ice, indigenous rights, and climate change. The course introduces historical methods and environmental history through reading, writing, discussion, and interpreting artifacts.

HIST 0577A. The Chinese Diaspora: A History of Globalization.

Why are there Chinese in the US, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Peru? Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines? Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Guam, Samoa? Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Cape Verde, Ghana? Spain, Germany, France, Russia, Czech Republic? Mauritius, Madagascar? India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar? Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan? How and when did 50 million Chinese find their way around the world during the past 500 years, from the Ming Dynasty to the present moment? We will explore worldwide distribution of ethnic Chinese through Time (history) and Space (culture) in the so-called “Chinese diaspora,” and examine questions of migration, identity, belonging, politics and conflict.

HIST 0577B. The US-Mexico Border and Borderlands: A Bilingual English-Spanish Seminar.

In this First Year seminar, we will examine the historical formation, contemporary reality and popular representation of the U.S.-Mexico border from bilingual (English-Spanish), multicultural (U.S., Mexican, Mexican-American, indigenous and Asian immigrant), and transnational perspectives within the framework of globalization, and pay particular attention to the movement of peoples—workers, families, women and children--in both directions.

HIST 0580M. The Age of Revolutions, 1760-1824.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the Americas belonged to a handful of European monarchies; within a few decades, most of the Americas was composed of independent republics, some of the European monarchs were either deposed or quaking on their thrones. Usually considered separately, revolutions in British North America, France, Saint-Domingue (Haiti) and Spanish America had diverse local circumstances yet composed a single cycle of intellectual ferment, imperial reform, accelerating violence and, forging of new political communities. We will examine revolutions that helped create the world we live in. Enrollment limited to 19 first year students. P

HIST 0580O. Making Change: Nonviolence in Action.

This seminar will focus on the life and work of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, examining both his role in the Indian nationalist movement, as well as the global impact of his ideas on leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. Enrollment limited to 19 first year students.

HIST 0582A. Animal Histories.

Animals have been people’s energy, food, wealth, gods, hobbies, icons, and companions. Wild and domesticated non-human animals are essential yet often invisible historical subjects. This seminar makes them visible by tracking them through time—ancient, modern, and contemporary—on every continent. They are often symbols, but we look beyond animals as represented by people. We are more interested in them as actors and subjects with agency. By pushing at the boundaries of what constitutes legitimate topics, this seminar serves as a critical introduction to the historical discipline.

HIST 0582B. Science and Society in Darwin's England.

This course is a first year seminar designed to introduce students to the study of history. It will be divided into two very different parts. The first part will be organized as a traditional history seminar in which we explore together the world in which Darwin developed his theory of the Origin of Species. The second part will be a historical re-enactment of an 1863 discussion in Britain's Royal Society about whether to award Darwin their highest honor, the Copley Medal. Enrollment limited to 19 first year students.

HIST 0590. Living in Soviet Russia and Beyond.

Drawing on film, interviews, literature, and more, this first-year seminar explores what it might have meant to “be” Soviet — and for whom and when. We will focus on lived experience as a topic of historical inquiry, and discuss the challenges and potentialities of doing so. While the primary geographic and temporal focus will be on Russia in the Soviet period, we will also look at examples of neighboring Soviet socialist republics, as well as the period immediately after the USSR’s collapse in 1991.

HIST 0621A. Surviving Medieval Paris.

What was it like to live in medieval Paris? This course explores this question from a variety of perspectives, including that of the urban poor, university students, sex workers, clergy, members of royal and noble courts, and merchants. Using sources ranging from poetry to chronicles to architecture, we will consider how cultural, political, and economic developments (including the construction of Notre Dame, the centralization of royal power in Paris, the emergence of one of the first universities, and the Black Death) impacted various individuals and communities within the city from around 1000 to 1500. The course also explores various moral perceptions of urban life in medieval Paris, a city which was described simultaneously as a city of plenty, a city of sacred learning, and a hotbed of sin.

HIST 0621B. The Search for King Arthur.

The King Arthur legend is one of the most enduring stories to emerge from medieval Britain. Drawing evidence from written and archaeological sources, we'll delve into shadowy period in which legend is based, between the collapse of Roman imperial power in Britain and establishment of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic kingdoms that would succeed the empire. We'll also take students inside the historian's workshop, exposing them to the tools, texts, and objects from which historians and archaeologists construct their interpretations of how the inhabitants of Arthur's Britain lived and died. Enrollment limited to 20 sophomores. P

HIST 0622A. "Information Overload" in Early Modern Europe.

Our current information overload is not the first time we’ve agonized over too much information and utilized different ways to cope. This course examines information overload in Early Modern Europe (1500-1800) and its connection to early modern data science. We will engage with the forms of information overload: knowledge access and use, community and social bonds, commodification, and even as a non-issue. Using a varied assortment of primary sources—from copyright laws to herbariums to account books—along with developing techniques to read academic articles and books, this class will help you begin to analyze the past with the tools of a historian. You will find that modern familiarity of “information overload” provides an entry way into thinking about the authority placed—and constructed—on information both in the early modern period and now.

HIST 0623A. British Social History.

What is the role of history in imagining progress, identity, and political movements? This course begins by reading classic nineteenth-century historians From Trevelyan to E. P. Thompson, asking about the politics implicit in their choice of subject and archive. It then turns to contemporary history, asking, how have debates about race, gender, and the environment in the past thirty years shaped how we look at history? How have different tools like digital history or the analysis of culture changed what we look at or why? How is the study of history changing today?

HIST 0623B. The Russian Revolution.

This sophomore seminar will examine in detail the Russian Revolution that toppled the Tsarist Autocracy in February 1917 and brought to power the Bolshevik party in October 1917. No prior knowledge of Russian history is required, although students should be eager to read extensively (and intensively), to participate in collaborative learning through discussion and the sharing of written work, and to improve their academic writing skills. At the end of the semester, students will work on final projects in which they offer their own interpretations of key events.

HIST 0623C. Americans in the USSR.

This Sophomore Seminar will investigate the countless American journalists, diplomats, students, tourists, athletes, musicians, etc. who traveled to the Soviet Union. We will pay careful attention to their preconceptions, motivations, experiences, and reflections after the fact. Some went for work, others to explore an alternative to capitalism or to build socialism, and still others traveled to explore a society that claimed to have overcome discrimination based race and gender. At the end of the semester, students will work on final projects in which they delve more deeply into a specific aspect of the topic.

HIST 0623D. The Great Patriotic War: The Soviet Experience of World War II.

The Eastern Front of World War II, fought largely on the territory of the Soviet Union and referred to there as the “Great Patriotic War,” represents one of the most lethal military conflicts in history. The war revealed and highlighted both the weaknesses and the strengths of the Soviet Union, stretching it to the breaking point before leading it to the postwar status of a superpower. This course will consider the decisive contribution of the Soviet Union to the defeat of Nazi Germany through the frameworks of political, social, cultural, economic, and gender history. Voices “from below” balance the incredible scale of this conflict with humanizing perspective help us to confront a central paradox—how the Soviet Union helped to end a genocide and liberated much of Europe while committing horrific atrocities of its own.

HIST 0623M. Becoming French: Minorities and the Challenges of Integration in the French Republic.

Recent controversies around Muslim integration, including debates around the headscarf and uprisings in the working class suburbs of French cities, point to difficulties France has faced in integrating minority populations. We'll explore the encounter between France and its immigrant, religious, and racial minorities from the Revolution to contemporary times. By comparing paths of integration and debates around minority inclusion and consider how minorities negotiated their identities as they struggled to internalize France’s cultural and historical legacy. We'll addresses political and historiographical debates over the relationship between political citizenship and religious/cultural identity. Enrollment limited to 20 sophomores.

HIST 0624. Coexistence and Violence in Europe: Jews, Muslims, Roma and their Neighbors.

From 1800 to 1950, the territories of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe were transformed from imperial peripheries with religiously and ethnically diverse populations to homogeneous nation-states. This transformation was achieved not only through assimilation and migration, but also through extreme intercommunal violence, including forced population exchange, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Today, these borderlands are a place of contested memory, where present-day homogeneity is projected backward in time by some, while others feel nostalgia for a lost era of coexistence. Students will consider examples of both peaceful coexistence and violent conflict among populations as well as the impact of the modern state, its institutions, and ideologies such as nationalism, liberalism, and socialism on these regions. Throughout the course students will focus especially on the history of the Jewish, Muslim, and Romani minorities in light of course themes.

HIST 0637B. Fractious Friendships: The United States and Latin America in the Twentieth Century.

From the vantage point of ordinary men and women, statesmen, businessmen, and scholars, this course explores how Latin Americans in various countries viewed and engaged with the United States during the twentieth century. We will look at how perceptions of the United States formed across Latin America and how and why they changed over time (or why they did not). The ultimate aim is to uncover the reasons for the sometimes amicable, but often strained, ties between Washington and its hemispheric counterparts. Prominent topics include imperialism, nationalism, war, diplomacy, popular culture, consumerism, and industrialization.

HIST 0637C. Culture and Cold War in Latin America.

How did the Cold War seep into everyday life? This course explores the relationship between culture, cultural production, and Cold War politics in Latin America. Over the course of the semester, we will highlight key themes such as: national identity, morality, modernity, religion, popular culture, authoritarianism, and imperialism. By pairing cultural studies readings and historical monographs, this course will engage cultural analysis in the study of Cold War history.

HIST 0637D. From Saint Domingue to Haiti: The Haitian Revolution and US Reverberations..

On January 1, 1801, Toussaint Louverture declared France’s former colonial jewel free and renamed it Hayti to honor its Indigenous roots. But the road to freedom was not easy, each argument for and against slavery and freedom as varied and complex as the next. This course, examines the making of the first free Black republic in the western hemisphere - from the west African coast to debates in France and the United states that centered on equality, commerce and abolition - debates that continue to reverberate throughout the nation of Haiti and its people today.

HIST 0650B. Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History: Women and Power During the American Revolution.

This seminar explores the role of women in the Revolutionary Era, from the 1760s through the end of the American Revolution to recast the traditional American founding narrative. This course will highlight women’s daily experiences to address their part in the political origins of the conflict, the resulting tension surrounding hierarchies of patriarchal power, and economic repercussions to ask if women had a concurrent revolution. Students will use primary and secondary sources to look at the gendered power dynamics as experienced by enslaved, Native American, and other dispossessed women during this violent period. P

HIST 0654A. Welfare States and a History of Modern Life.

History of the American welfare state, from its origins in nineteenth-century industrial capitalism to contemporary debates about health care, in comparative perspective. Why did welfare states appear and what form did the U.S. version take? Considerations of social inequality, labor relations, race, gender, family policy, the social wage, and the relationship between markets and the state are all considered. Some comparison with European models.

HIST 0654B. American Patriotism in Black and White.

This course explores the different and sometimes conflicting definitions and meanings of patriotism and citizenship through the lens of African American history and military participation, using primary and secondary sources from the colonial period to the present, including political and legal documents, letters to editors, literary pieces, plays, speeches, and petitions. What are the many definitions of freedom and patriotism, and how have black people understood their realities as they chose to serve militarily? This social and political (not military) history focuses on the political implications of African Americans’ military service for/to the nation over three centuries.

HIST 0654C. The Oldest Profession: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Sex Work.

In America, sex sells. The sex industry has and continues to be a topic of debate surrounding issues of consent, labor, pleasure, and the gendered marketplace. This course examines various facets of the sex industry (i.e., prostitution, exotic dance, film, and internet-based sex work) from the nineteenth century to the present day and examines the industry through the lenses of gendered labor, race and class, and the social, political, and legal controls employed to regulate the industry. The course will examine historical texts on sex work as well as live interviews with retired sex workers to explore the lived experiences of sex work from historical and contemporary perspectives.

HIST 0655A. Culture Wars in American Schools.

This course examines "culture wars" in American public schools over the past century. It will explore how and why school curriculum has become an arena for cultural conflict and how those debates have changed over time. These debates clashes in schools over religion, values, politics, and educational aims raise important questions about majority and minority rights, the existence and meaning of a common national culture, and the role of schooling in a democratic nation. Enrollment limited to 20 first year students and sophomores.

HIST 0656A. History of Intercollegiate Athletics.

The United States is the only country in the world in which practically every institution of higher education finances and promotes high-caliber athletics. How did this phenomenon happen? Has there ever been any resistance to its happening? How and when did African Americans integrate collage sports? Did Title IX really open up opportunities for women in college sports? Are sports the “front door” of colleges and universities? This course examines these and other questions as it examines the interrelationship between the histories of sports and higher education in the U.S.

HIST 0657A. Early American Lives.

This is a writing-designated (WRIT) course that examines the intersection of biography and history. We will focus on 17 to 19th c. North America and read studies of a female Mohawk, a renegade New England colonist, an enslaved African American who escaped from George Washington, a lesbian couple, a forgotten 19th c. celebrity, and a Civil War spy. Students will also research and write their own historical-biographical essays.

HIST 0658D. Walden + Woodstock: The American Lives of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bob Dylan.

Emerson and Dylan are cultural icons. Emerson has been called “Mr. America” and Dylan has just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Both had boundless energy for public performance and self-representation; both actively supported turning points in the civil rights struggle; both raged against American military aggression; both were at the epicenter of a wide circle of intellectuals, while denying their own centrality. What is the celebrity intellectual’s responsibility to society while remaining true to oneself? Poems, essays, autobiographies, songs, and movies provide insight into these eternally fascinating geniuses and their times.

HIST 0659A. Excessive Force: State Violence, Vigilantism, and the History of "Law and Order" America.

During the summer of 2020, the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others at the hands of police sparked protests across the United States and around the world. Many activists insisted upon viewing these popular uprisings in historical terms, suggesting the violence endemic to the contemporary criminal legal system is rooted in the history of antebellum era slave patrols. This course further explores that idea by tracing the history of state violence and extralegal vigilantism from the colonial period to the present. Whether carried out by duly constituted authorities or ordinary citizens, by force or in its apparent absence, conceptions of legal order have played an instrumental role throughout U.S. history. Covering topics ranging from citizen’s arrest laws to Broken Windows policing, our aim will be to approach “law enforcement” as an essentially political process that's changed over time.

HIST 0673A. Colonial Encounters in the Early Atlantic.

This seminar introduces students to the range of primary sources and archival collections used by historians and other scholars to understand the emergence of an integrated Atlantic world in the period between 1400 and 1650. Analyses of source material will be supplemented by secondary scholarship to consider the various approaches by which historians have characterized patterns of trans-regional exchange, dispossession, and colonialism between Atlantic Africa, Brazil, the Greater Caribbean, and Atlantic Europe. Students will have the opportunity to develop paleographic fluency in late medieval and early modern written sources in any relevant language(s) in which they have preexisting knowledge.

HIST 0675A. The Chinese Diaspora: A History of Globalization.

To understand globalization is to study linkages and circulation of peoples, goods, cultures and ideas across space (land and sea) and over time. There is no better illustration of globalization than the Chinese diaspora--the worldwide dissemination of Chinese people and their descendants across the world from the Ming Dynasty to present. After sketching the global contour of this phenomenon, students will drill down deeper into specific regions of the world to examine conflicts and integration as immigrants localize; identity, community and social formations as immigrants re-territorialize; as well as transnational relationships with place of origin and co-ethnics in the diaspora.

HIST 0676A. History of the Laboratory.

Few spaces better represent progress and profit than laboratories. Industrial, commercial, public, and private labs are seen as catalysts for moving society forward and inching toward a technotopian future. In the meantime, such spaces produce better medicines, goods, and knowledge. However, these modern laboratories have a history. From their beginnings in the ancient world through medieval, early modern, and finally twenty-first-century forms, these spaces changed in the face of emerging cultural, social, and intellectual forces. This course traces this history while taking into consideration factors such as non-Western influences, colonialism, and history “from below.” From alchemical experiments to Franklin’s electricity to modern medical research, we will trace the development of laboratories through primary and secondary sources including ancient archaeological finds, prison notebooks, and the classic film Frankenstein. P

HIST 0678A. What Do Concubines Have to Do with It? Gender, Sexuality, and Status in the Premodern World.

Intimate relationships outside the scope of marriage were everywhere in the medieval world. Often associated with notions of romanticism and ‘illicit love’ in the modern imagination, the individuals involved in these relationships had to grapple with a variety of sociocultural and legal realities to pursue such ends as economic or legal independence or obtaining positions of autonomy and power. Drawing upon a range of sources, this course considers both the constraining and transgressive possibilities of non-marital intimate relationships across the medieval and early modern periods (roughly c.600-1700). This thematic focus provides a new way of exploring the premodern world, considering such issues as gender, sexuality, class, race, drawing comparisons across seemingly disparate regions – from the Iberian Peninsula to the colonial Transatlantic to Tang China – while also attending to historical contingencies on the level of the local and personal.

HIST 0682E. Lobsters, Thylacines, and Bacteria: An Introduction to Animal Histories.

Amid a period of existential human angst about the future of our planet and the other creatures on it, the discipline of history is experiencing an “animal turn”. This developing interdisciplinary approach draws on numerous fields, from anthropology to veterinary science, to better understand the lived experiences of non-human animals in the near and distant past. Animals have not only played important roles in human history, as abstract symbols, exploited resources, or close partners, but they also have their own histories. Can we get at animal histories independent of human interference? In this discussion-based seminar we will explore a variety of research modes in the emerging field of animal histories and tackle the challenge of de-centering humanity in the study of the past.

HIST 0685A. The Social Lives of Dead Bodies in China and Beyond.

The dead are all around us, but how do we know it? This course aims to uncover how corpses interact with the living as participants in social relations, especially during times of community upheaval. We'll take China and Taiwan as jumping off points, but also look elsewhere in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe since the 19th century, when the broadening scale and nature of warfare; state expansion; rapid development; global circulations of technology; and the interplay of international philanthropies with older forms of charity and ritual pacification significantly affected the treatment, conceptions, and actions of the dead.

HIST 0690A. Empire and Everyday Life in Colonial Latin America.

What was it like to live a “regular” life in the American colonies of Spain and Portugal? How did people eat, dress, have fun, start and sustain families, pursue careers, and think about the world and themselves? Drawing upon a range of sources, this course considers how global and local forces intersected in the individual or community in myriad, yet historically contingent, ways. This micro focus provides another way of considering the broad historical forces at work in the colonies, such as religion, gender, politics, race, technology, and geography, from the “inside-out” perspective of individual and communal accounts and stories.

HIST 0690B. Women's Work: Gender and Capitalism in American History.

This course examines the importance of women and gender to the long economic history of the United States. Whereas the history of American capitalism has often been a primarily male story, this course moves women from the margins of the narrative to the center. It asks how female labor (paid and unpaid), cultural norms around gender and family, and issues of sex and reproduction have fundamentally shaped economic life—not just for women, but for all Americans. Students will gain insight into American women’s history, the history of capitalism, and the intersectional history of gender, sexuality, race, and class.

HIST 0690C. Cities of the Global South.

With the most significant wave of population growth and urbanization sweeping across Asia, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, the ‘Global South’ is taking center stage in academic discourses. This course examines numerous cities across these regions, along multiple thematic axes, to provide an understanding of the social, political, cultural, economic forces shaping its dwellers’ fates – from a historical perspective: whose history is being recorded, and by whom? what do historians mean by “history of the city”? just what is the ‘Southern’ city? how do we bring alive the heterogeneity of these cities embedded in different historical trajectories? how can we convey these cities as places of both challenge and great promise? Utilizing a diverse archive of academic texts, fiction, documentaries, and maps this course explores cities as varied as Lahore, Delhi, Tehran, Cairo, Mexico City, Havana, Bogota, Kinshasa, and Nairobi.

HIST 0690D. Bodies that Matter: Environmental Histories of Disability in the United States.

This course places two stories side-by-side: changing experiences and conceptions of disability in the United States and changing experiences and conceptions of the nonhuman environment. Reading scholarship in environmental and disability history and relying on a diverse array of primary sources, this course traces relationships between bodies, minds, and land in the U.S. over the past 200 years. Through histories of slavery, animal labor, wilderness preservation, atomic radiation, disability and environmental activism, and COVID-19, we will ask how human and nonhuman bodies were made and unmade in processes of environmental change indoors and out, how the political meanings of disability, incapacity, and productivity were constructed over time, and what a just future for disabled life and the nonhuman world might entail. This course requires no prerequisites and introduces key topics and approaches in both U.S. environmental history and disability history/studies.

HIST 0720. The Romans.

The Romans established the only successful pan-Mediterranean empire in history, lasting nearly 1,000 years, with a legacy living everywhere today, from the U.S. Constitution to the English alphabet. Who were these people? We will study their social-political history from the city’s founding in 753 BCE to its fall in 476 CE, confronting the opinions of ancient authors directly to study historical questions such as: what challenges and problems did empire create? How did gender shape Roman lives? Or what does the decline of Rome’s democracy reveal about the state of American democracy?

HIST 0770. Evil: The History of an Idea.

This course considers how individuals and societies have constructed the idea of evil. We examine evil’s origins in religious traditions and review how those interpretations have been deployed and how the concept of evil has changed over time. Is it possible to offer a universal definition of evil? Is it true that “When a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil?” Does evil exist in “the Other” or oneself? To answer these questions, we engage in activities and discussion about sin, hell, pacts with the devil, witches, torture, lynching, genocide, psychopaths, empathy, and representations of evil in music, literature, and film.

HIST 0770B. Political Imprisonment and Captivity in the Modern World: from Revolution to Conscience.

This course examines the history of political incarceration and captivity since the French Revolution. What is the relationship between the rise of ideologies such as fascism, communism and nationalism on the one hand, and the use of political imprisonment on the other? How do crimes and the political intersect? We examine several cases to consider how captivity has been used for political purposes in the modern world. In addition to scholarly works, readings will consist of primary source documents and memoirs. Emphasis will be placed on Europe, but the course will also include lectures and readings on other geographic regions.

HIST 0770C. World War II: A Global History from Below.

The largest and deadliest conflict in human history, World War II dramatically transformed the modern world. This course will look at the war from the bottom up, exploring the experiences of ordinary people from across the world. In particular, centering the opportunities and challenges the war presented to members of marginalized groups in uniform, in occupied territory, and returning home after the war. Students will analyze a variety of primary and secondary sources through class discussion and assignments, drawing conclusions about the agency of these individuals as well as the social, cultural, and political legacies of the war.

HIST 0770D. WWII on the Screen: Memory, Politics, and Representation.

This course will explore how cinematic portrayals of the Second World War—the largest and deadliest armed conflict in human history—have shaped our understanding of the war and its aftermath. As a requirement for this class, students will watch and discuss films depicting the events of World War II in a variety of temporal and national contexts. Class discussions will examine cinema not only as secondary source that can be used to learn more about historical events, but also as a primary source that reveals the changing nature of political memory surrounding the war. Students will examine the mass psychology of the cinematic experience and consider how the ascendance of cinema as both an art form and a means of mass political communication that shaped political and social life in the twentieth-century.

HIST 0903I. History of Holocaust-JUDS0902.

HIST 0930A. Word, Image and Power in Renaissance Italy (ITAL 0580).

Interested students must register for ITAL 0580.

HIST 0930E. Sacrifice and Suffering: Rhetorics of Martyrdom Compared (RELS 0640).

Interested students must register for RELS 0640.

HIST 0930F. Twentieth-Century Africa (AFRI 0160).

Interested students must register for AFRI 0160.

HIST 0930G. Difficult Relations? Judaism and Christianity from the Middle Ages until the Present (JUDS 0050M).

Interested students must register for JUDS 0050M.

HIST 0930I. History of the Holocaust (JUDS 0902).

Interested students must register for JUDS 0902.

HIST 0930J. The World of Byzantium (CLAS 0660).

Interested students must register for CLAS 0660.

HIST 0930L. Israel's Wars (JUDS 0050H).

Interested students must register for JUDS 0050H.

HIST 0930M. Brothers Betrayed: Jews and Poles from 1500 until Today (JUDS 0901).

Interested students must register for JUDS 0901.

HIST 0930N. War and Society in the Ancient World (CLAS 0560).

Interested students must register for CLAS 0560.

HIST 0930P. Powering the Past (ENVS 0710).

Interested students must register for ENVS 0710.

HIST 0930Q. Introduction to Modern South Asia (SAST 0700).

Interested students must register for SAST 0700.

HIST 0930R. War and Society in Ancient Greece (CLAS 0650).

Interested students must register for CLAS 0650.

HIST 0930S. Beyond Orientalism: Understanding 'East Asia' (EAST 0010).

Interested students must register for EAST 0010.

HIST 0930T. Ecological Imperialism (ENVS 0720).

Interested students must register for ENVS 0720.

HIST 0930U. Before Wikipedia (COLT 0610Q).

Interested students must register for COLT 0610Q.

HIST 0930W. 21st Century Classics (CLAS 0320).

Interested students must register for CLAS 0320.

HIST 0930X. The Quran and its Readers (COLT 0711L).

Interested students must register for COLT 0711L.

HIST 0930Y. Courtesans, Concubines, and Wives: Gender Relations in Imperial China (EAST 0309).

Interested students must register for EAST 0309.

HIST 0930Z. The 1001 Nights (COLT 0510K).

Interested students must register for COLT 0510K.

HIST 0940A. History of Intercollegiate Athletics (EDUC 0850).

Interested students must register for EDUC 0850.

HIST 0940B. The Campus on Fire: American Colleges and Universities in the 1960's (EDUC 0400).

Interested students must register for EDUC 0400.

HIST 0940C. When Leaders Lie: Machiavelli in International Context (ITAL 0981).

Interested students must register for ITAL 0981.

HIST 0940D. The Border/La Frontera (ETHN 0090A).

Interested students must register for ETHN 0090A.

HIST 0940E. Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement (AFRI 0110C).

Interested students must register for AFRI 0110C.

HIST 0940F. Brown v. Board of Education (EDUC 0610).

Interested students must register for EDUC 0610.

HIST 0940G. From Amsterdam to Istanbul: Christians, Moslems, and Jews (JUDS 0050E).

Interested students must register for JUDS 0050E.

HIST 0940H. The Jew in the Modern World (JUDS 0050L).

Interested students must register for JUDS 0050L.

HIST 0940I. Social Welfare in the Ancient Greek City (CLAS 0310).

Interested students must register for CLAS 0310.

HIST 0940K. Israel's Wars (JUDS 0050H).

Interested students must register for JUDS 0050H.

HIST 0940L. Difficult Relations? Judaism and Christianity from the Middle Ages Until the Present (JUDS 0050M).

Interested students must register for JUDS 0050M.

HIST 0940M. Catastrophic Japan (EAST 0141).

Interested students must register for EAST 0141.

HIST 0940N. Religion Violence and Media (RELS 0090M).

Interested students must register for RELS 0090M.

HIST 0960G. When Leaders Lie: Machiavelli in International Context (ITAL 0981).

Interested students must register for ITAL 0981.

HIST 0980K. Extinction: A Global History (ENVS 0700C).

Interested students must register for ENVS 0700C.

HIST 0980L. Food for Thought: Food and Agriculture in the History of the Americas (ENVS 0700D).

Interested students must register for ENVS 0700D.

HIST 0980Q. Contestations Within Political Islam (RELS 0600F)..

Interested students must register for RELS 0600F.

HIST 1030. Entangled South Africa.

Examines the contradiction of twentieth century South Africa as a divided society that nonetheless had dense contact across boundaries. In considering daily life, social interactions, and relations with animals, we find a challenging politics of entanglement within the class, gender, and racial hierarchies of apartheid. We close with a discussion of new divisions and alignments emerging during the transition to democratic rule in the 1990s.

HIST 1032. South Africa: Apartheid and After.

This course considers the most extreme form of settler colonial dispossession -- South African apartheid. We examine the ideological and capitalist foundations of economic, political, social, and territorial segregation. We also explore the range of visions for how to do away with apartheid and what should come after it. The dramatic story of struggle ended with what some considered a near-miraculous resolution in 1994. Our consideration of the decades since then reveals the compromises of that resolution and the enduring burden of South Africa's colonial past.

HIST 1050. Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

This lecture class looks at the relationship between Africa and the Transatlantic slave trade from the late fifteenth century to the nineteenth century. We deal with the main regions of Atlantic Africa affected by the largest forced migration in the history of humankind, focusing on such issues as resistance to the slave trade and the role of slavery in the African continent. The class will reflect on the relationship between the slave trade and African patterns of long-term underdevelopment as well as the relationship between the abolition of the trade and the rise of colonialism in the nineteenth century. P

HIST 1060. Colonial Africa.

From in the late 19th century until the mid-20th century, European powers held the African continent as their colonial possession. This course engages recent historical literature to survey the changes wrought through empire. Beginning with Africa international relations before the imperial scramble, we will probe what changed and what endured under this new condition. We also examine hopes for an independent future. We will seek out both the limits of European empire in Africa and the incomplete nature of decolonization.

HIST 1070. "Modern" Africa.

This course begins with the end of imperialism and ends with a look toward the future. Themes include the pivotal importance of the newly sovereign states, the ongoing engagement with the rest of the world, and shared opinion about the imperative of modern development, even as definitions of modern and development differed. Readings include many primary sources, supplemented by articles on history and social science. Evaluation is based on participation, a map quiz, mid-term and final examinations, and short writing examinations, including article reviews. Students will also discover, analyze, and edit two new primary sources.

HIST 1080. Humanitarianism and Conflict in Africa.

This course focuses on the major issues and debates concerning humanitarianism and international intervention in 20th century Africa. It will explore the history of humanitarianism and the many challenges that arise when governments and institutions intervene in a conflict. Then students will investigate specific sites of conflict in Africa (ranging from Nigeria, Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan, and Western Sahara) and analyze different models of intervention and aid. These case studies will expose students to pivotal events in African history and equip them with a critical vocabulary with which to assess contemporary conflicts.

HIST 1101. Chinese Political Thought from Confucius to Xi Jinping.

This lecture-discussion course traces the rich history of Chinese political thinking from the beginnings of written history—when different visions of good governance competed for the attention of the rulers of the day—through to the present. We begin with the study of ancient political ideas, for it is during the earliest periods of Chinese history that the greatest variety of government modes are proposed. Political philosophy is the focus, but we also examine the institutions that were developed to translate ideals into action and to the tensions that arose as a consequence of efforts to reconcile different political philosophies in practice during the imperial period. The last section of the course is devoted to the radical changes in thinking and government institutions that take place over the course of the late nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

HIST 1110. Imperial China/China: Culture and Legacy.

As the current revival of Confucianism in the People’s Republic of China demonstrates, the past is still very much alive in China today. This lecture-and-discussion course surveys the history of China from the origins of the first state through the twilight of the imperial period in the nineteenth century. Lectures are designed and the reading assignments chosen to emphasize in particular those ideas and beliefs, institutions and government structures, and literary and artistic developments that have shaped (and continue to shape) China today. “Imperial China” provides the knowledge necessary for informed study of modern China. P

HIST 1111. Women and Gender Relations in China.

An overview of the changing roles of women (and men) in Chinese society. We begin with the cosmological views that defined the genders and their separate spheres in early China; and the institutions (the family, the imperial state) that regulated gender roles and factors (class, religious belief) that complicated and at times undermined these regulations. We focus then on how the economic, social, and intellectual changes of the early modern period precipitated a re-examination of women and their roles in the family and society; and trace the impact of the resulting changes on modern and contemporary gender roles and relations. P

HIST 1112. China's Early Modern Empires.

“China’s Early Modern Empires” traces the development of empire in the China region from the rise of the Mongols in the twelfth century to the eve of China’s encounter with the West in the nineteenth century. The course focuses on the early modern empires of the Chinese Ming (1368-1644) and Manchu Qing (1644-1911), situating them in larger patterns of world history. We look at how conquest and the demands of empire-building shaped frontier relations and East Asian regional geopolitics, as well as social relations (ethnic and gender identities in particular), economic organization, government, and culture within the core Chinese portions of the empires. Emphasizing the dynamic character of the region’s history prior to the rise of modern Western imperialism, the course provides a solid foundation for the study of modern and contemporary China. P

HIST 1118. China's Late Empires.

A post-nationalist perspective on history in China from 1200-1930, with emphasis on empire--formation, gender, and daily life in the Mongol Yuan, Chinese Ming, and Manchu Qing empires, as well as nationalist reconstructions of the Chinese past in the early twentieth century. P

HIST 1120. At China's Edges.

What does it mean to live on the borders of a rising world power? This course introduces the modern histories of such places as Hong Kong; Macau; Taiwan; Manchuria; Sichuan; Yunnan; and Xinjiang by investigating their commonalities and differences. Themes include: ecology and identity; comparative colonialisms and experiences of decolonization; war and border regions; nation building, citizenship, and the "art of not being governed." Students will have an opportunity to research additional sites (e.g. Mongolia, Tibet) using frameworks introduced in class discussions.

HIST 1121. The Modern Chinese Nation: An Idea and Its Limits.

How did the Chinese empire become a nation-state? This course introduces the history of Chinese societies from 1850, when a massive civil war destabilized the country and sent a new wave of migrants across the globe. We will explore how local and regional society was affected by the spread of new conceptions of the Chinese nation, new kinds of government, and cultural and technological innovations. Coursework addresses the construction of race, ethnicity, and religion as well as gender and sexuality; the effects of war and catastrophe; different formulations of revolution and self-strengthening; and more.

HIST 1122. China Pop: The Social History of Chinese Popular Culture.

An exploration of how the artifacts of visual, material, aural and ritual culture illuminate the construction of and tensions in Chinese society at various levels and localities during the last two centuries. Topics include arrangements of space and time; gender and the body; popular entertainment; religion and performance; the growth of mass media; and the relationship of cultural forms to politics, local identity, and global forces. Class projects will draw on the Haffrenreffer collection and develop multimedia presentations.

HIST 1123. China's Socialist Dreams.

A history of the People's Republic of China under Mao in its context. We’ll explore the appeal of anarchism and socialism in the early 20th century and experiments in rural utopianism and worker autonomy. To understand the Chinese Communist Party, we’ll examine it as upstart, revolutionary vanguard, strategic ally, army, and state builder. Using new research on 1950s-70s Chinese society, we’ll ask how the Maoist party-state reached the lives of urbanites and farmers; affected gender relations and constructions of sexuality, age, and family; and shifted formulations of ethnicity, race and China’s place in the world.

HIST 1124. China and the Modern World.

This course would stretch from the 19th century to the present day, placing China alongside of its major regional and global interlocutors of each era. Thus, the course would engage with East and South Asian maritime history, Japanese and Korean history, Soviet and Russian history, US history in several time periods, and so on. This course would serve as a launching pad for students to further explore Chinese, Asian and transnational history.

HIST 1140. Samurai and Merchants, Prostitutes and Priests: Japanese Urban Culture in the Early Modern Period.

Examines the cultural traditions of the urban samurai, the wealthy merchant, and the plebian artisan that emerged in the great metropolises of Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto during the early modern period. Focuses on the efforts of the government to mold certain kinds of cultural development for its own purposes and the efforts of various social groups to redirect those efforts to suit their desires and self-interest. P

HIST 1141. Japan in the Age of the Samurai.

This course is for students interested in exploring Japan’s remarkable cultural, political and social transformations during the Age of the Samurai, which began in the late 12th century and came to a close in the mid-19th century. Lectures, readings and films will explore how the emergence of new forms of military expertise and technologies led to the creation of warrior-led “tent governments,” that first co-existed with and eventually supplanted the structures of power centered on Kyoto and the Imperial Court. Open to all students. P

HIST 1149. Imperial Japan.

This course is for students interested in exploring the changing ideas, technologies and practices that shaped Japan’s history from the 1850s, when it confronted the power of an encroaching West, to the 1930s when its choices led the nation to the edge of ruin. Lectures and readings will address the collapse of the Tokugawa regime, the Meiji Restoration, the construction of empire, and the emergence of new forms of cultural and political expression. Students will also learn how ideas about gender, race, and tradition were understood and made use of in Imperial Japan. Open to all students.

HIST 1150. Modern Japan.

Japan is a rich site for an exploration of many of the key processes and concepts that have shaped, and continue to transform, the modern world. These include the creation of the nation as the fundamental structure for social and political organization, a development that came late to Japan and had profound effects on its relationships with its neighbors, the crafting of its own histories, and with the emergence of debates about what it meant to be “Japanese.” The course also explores how ideas about gender, race, and tradition have been understood and made use of in modern Japan.

HIST 1155. Japan's Pacific War: 1937-1945.

Uses film, oral histories, historical fiction, and more traditional forms of historical interpretation to explore the events, ideas, and legacies of Japan's Pacific War. The armed conflict began in 1937 with the Japanese invasion of China and ended in 1945 with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some attention is paid to military developments, but the principle concerns fall into the areas of mutual images, mobilization, and memory.

HIST 1156. Postwar Japan.

This course is for students interested in exploring Japan’s remarkable cultural, political and social transformations from the closing days of the Second World War, through its emergence as an apparent exemplar of democratization’s potential and capitalism’s benefits, and on to the contemporary era. Lectures, readings and films will explore the legacies of the war and the Occupation, the so-called “economic miracle” (and its effects on the environment), the protest movements of the 1960s and beyond, and Japan’s complicated relationships with its neighbors, with the U.S., and with its own recent history. Open to all students.

HIST 1200A. Mediterranean Culture Wars: Archaic Greek History, c 1200 to 479 BC.

From the end of the Bronze Age to the end of the Persian Wars is a period of considerable change in the Mediterranean and beyond. The Greek polis challenges the powers of the ancient Near East. Over seven centuries we meet Greek writing, Homeric epic, and the first historian (Herodotus). But the Greek world lay on the edges of the Ancient Near East and this course tries to offer a more balanced approach than the typically Hellenocentric perspective of the standard textbooks.
It addresses cultural, political, social, and economic histories. Literary, epigraphical and archaeological cultures provide the evidence. No previous knowledge of the ancient world is required.

HIST 1200B. The Fall of Empires and Rise of Kings: Greek History to 478 to 323 BCE.

The Greek world was transformed in less than 200 years. The rise and fall of Empires (Athens and Persia) and metamorphosis of Macedon into a supreme power under Philip II and Alexander the Great provide the headlines. The course covers an iconic period of history, and explores life-changing events that affected the people of the eastern Mediterranean and the topics that allow us to understand aspects of life and culture of the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. and through these transformations, offers insights into the common pressures that communities confronted. No prior knowledge of ancient history is required. P

HIST 1200C. History of Greece: From Alexander the Great to the Roman Conquest.

In 334 BCE, the 22-year-old Alexander crossed over to Asia and North Africa, changing the history of the West forever. The invasion by a small, if intensely introspective, Greek peoples led to the spread of a monotheistic idea, belief in individualism, alienation from central power, and, conversely, the creation of natural law and human rights, and a deep desire for universalism. By its silences, the preserved narrative (constructed by European males) minimizes the lives of women, children, slaves, and those not of European origin. But largely because of Alexander’s conquests and the expansion of cosmopolitan thinking, the evidence embedded in Hellenistic history is far more diverse than for most other periods of classical history. This course focuses on inclusive social and intellectual history. Of particular emphasis will be the tension between the individual and the search for universal connection. P

HIST 1201A. Roman History I.

No description available.

HIST 1201B. Roman History II: The Empire.

The social and political history of the Roman Empire (14-565 CE). Focuses on expansion, administration, and Romanization of the empire; crisis of the 3rd century; militarization of society and monarchy; the struggle between paganism and Christianity; the end of the Empire in the West. Special attention given to the role of women, slaves, law, and historiography. Ancient sources in translation.

HIST 1202. Formation of the Classical Heritage: Greeks, Romans, Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Explores essential social, cultural, and religious foundation blocks of Western Civilization, 200 BCE to 800 CE. The main theme is the eternal struggle between universalism and particularism, including: Greek elitism vs. humanism; Roman imperialism vs. inclusion; Jewish assimilation vs. orthodoxy; Christian fellowship vs. exclusion, and Islamic transcendence vs. imminence. We will study how ancient Western individuals and societies confronted oppression and/or dramatic change and developed intellectual and spiritual strategies still in use today. Students should be prepared to examine religious thought from a secular point of view. There is no prerequisite or assumed knowledge of the period. P

HIST 1205. The Long Fall of the Roman Empire.

The collapse of the Roman Empire was the crucible in which the cultures of the medieval West, Byzantium, and Islam were forged. This class examines the tensions and transformations within Mediterranean society between 250 and 1100 CE and how these tribulations gave birth to new identities, boundaries, economies, and religious beliefs. We will explore too the points of contact between the emerging Latin, Byzantine, and Islamic worlds and how people living in the late ancient and early medieval Mediterranean sought to devise solutions to the challenges that confronted them as their worlds collapsed, expanded, and changed. Class meetings will interweave narrative and thematic lectures with student analysis of primary sources in translation. Topics include early Christianity, the body, gender, barbarian invasions and the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the rise of Islam, Charlemagne, and the Vikings. P

HIST 1210A. The Viking Age.

For two centuries, Viking marauders struck terror into hearts of European Christians. Feared as raiders, Norsemen were also traders and explorers who maintained a network of connections stretching from North America to Baghdad and who developed a complex civilization that was deeply concerned with power and its abuses, the role of law in society, and the corrosive power of violence. This class examines the tensions and transformations within Norse society between AD 750 and 1100 and how people living in the Viking world sought to devise solutions to the challenges that confronted them as their world expanded and changed. P

HIST 1211. Becoming Medieval: Self, Other, and the World.

Complex relations among the foundational categories of self, other, and the world emerged in high medieval Europe that shaped the future of the globe. In exploring the high middle ages, this course exposes constructions of the self and patterns of power that engendered xenophobia, colonizing conquests, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, environmental change, surveillance of deviants, and stark hierarchies of class, gender, and sexuality. Yet cross-dressing peasant girls who led armies, crusading knights who wore Muslim silks, Jews who advised Christian rulers, sub-Saharan Africans who enjoyed prominence at European courts, and Mongol-curious missionaries also belonged to the process of becoming medieval. As this course demonstrates, Europe in this period became intertwined with other regions, and was home to people of a diverse array of identities who lived boundary-defying lives and articulated capacious notions of self, other, and the world that resonate today.

HIST 1211A. From Imperial Diadem to Papal Tiara: Analyzing the Sources for the History of Europe, 476 to 1215.

How do we know what happened in the past? Sure, you can flip open a book or read a Wikipedia page, but how, in this age of fake news, do you know who to trust? What makes a source of information reliable or unreliable, useless or useful? Looking at the history of western Europe from the aftermath of the fall of Rome, this course tackles these questions head-on though a deep, analytical engagement with a variety of different primary sources. From the spectacular miracles of saints to everyday lists of dry goods and property boundaries, true history resides in the text, if only one is clever enough to see it.

HIST 1213. Memories of the Medieval in the Age of White Supremacy.

This course explores how the idea of a “medieval” period helped to create nationalist and racist identities in Europe and America—and continues to provide the bedrock for white nationalist identities—over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through an exploration of literature, art, architecture, and film.

HIST 1216. The Paradox of Early Modern Europe.

European social, intellectual, political, and economic history from the 15th to the 18th centuries, with an eye to the paradox embodied in the term "early modern." On the one hand, this is supposedly the heroic era of Columbus, Machiavelli, Newton, and Montesquieu, when Europeans became increasingly global, urban, and critical. On the other hand, this period also saw the rise of judicial torture, new regimes of discipline, colonialism, and a robust belief in the unseen world of demons, angels, and witches. We will explore the interplay of these paradoxical forces in Europe's transformation from medieval into modern. P

HIST 1230A. Modern European Intellectual and Cultural History: Revolution and Romanticism, 1760-1860.

A lecture course, primarily for juniors and seniors, that focuses on salient philosophic, artistic, and ideological currents of 19th-century Europe. Beginning with the crisis of political and cultural legitimacy posed by the French Revolution, it concludes with the consolidation of bourgeois culture in the 1860s and 1870s and the two great scientific systematizers of these decades: Darwin and Marx.

HIST 1230B. Modern European Intellectual and Cultural History: The Fin de Siecle, 1880-1914.

A sequel to HIST 1230A focusing on radical intellectual and cultural currents that challenged and destabilized the assumptions of Victorian high culture during the fin de siecle. Through a careful reading of primary texts by Hobhouse, Nietzsche, Weber, and Freud. The course explores issues such as the rise of mass consumer culture, neoliberal and neofascist politics, philosophic irrationalism, psychoanalysis, and the woman question.

HIST 1230C. The Search for Renewal in 20th century Europe.

The overarching theme of the course is the relationship between modernity and the primitive as manifested in major cultural, aesthetic and political movements in the 20th century. Films are an integral part of the course.

HIST 1235A. Making A "Second Sex": Women and Gender in Modern European History.

This course deals with the history of European women and gender from the Enlightenment to the present. It will focus on large historical themes and questions, especially shifting constructions of femininity and masculinity. It will begin with an analysis of eighteenth-century philosophies regarding women and gender, and it will move to examinations of specific topics such as industrialization, Victorian femininity, the suffrage movements, gender and the Great War, interwar sexuality, fascism, gender and the Second World War, and the sexual revolution.

HIST 1240A. Politics of Violence in 20C Europe.

Europe's 20th century saw the emergence of forms of violence unthinkable in a world without mass politics. To better understand the changes in European states and societies that gave rise to total war and the violence associated with totalizing ideologies such as fascism and communism, we will read Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Fanon and others who sought to interpret violence as an extension of ideology. We will also read selections from more recent works by state leaders, historians and cultural figures from Ukraine to France, from Turkey to Great Britain who have reinterpreted past violence for present political ends.

HIST 1241A. Migration in European History.

From the “Germanic” people’s migrations of antiquity to the global refugee crises of today, migration has left an indelible mark on European society. What are the causes and consequences of periods of "mass" migration? Surveying major episodes in recent European migration history, this lecture course explores how human mobility has historically shaped culture, politics, economics, and society on this continent. Special attention will be given to the 19th century, an exceptional chapter in global migration history that saw more than 50 million Europeans departing for the Americas.

HIST 1241B. Understanding the Body in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.

In medieval Europe, the body was both a site of sin and the grounds where sin might find redemption in penance or prayer. The health of the medieval body was implicated by the health of the soul (and vice versa). In early modern Europe, the body shed some of its sacred meanings as it became an object of professionalized medical discourse. We trace this “disenchantment” of the body by examining concepts of sickness and health, the roles of gender and racial differences in understanding the nature of the body, and the changing social practices regarding human bodies and mortal remains. P

HIST 1260D. Living Together: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Iberia.

A pressing issue in today's pluralistic societies is how people of different identities (religious, ethnic, etc.) can live together. This course explores a slice of history that can help us think through questions of difference in our world: medieval Spain, where for centuries Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in close proximity. Through explicit juxtaposition with modern debates, this course examines how these people understood and structured their relations with each other in the Iberian Peninsula between 711 and 1492. Themes include: identity and cultural definition; power and religious violence; tolerance and intolerance; acculturation and assimilation; gender and sexuality. P

HIST 1261E. After Empire: Modern Spain in the 20th Century.

This course situates 20th-century Spain at the crossroads of postcolonialism, ideological violence, and contested modernization. Spain entered the century amidst a profound national identity crisis, stirred by its defeat in the Cuban Independence War. Over the next decades, conflict erupted among advocates of different visions of Spain, while the rise of mass politics transformed Spain in the first battleground in the global confrontation between fascism, communism, and liberalism. General Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War installed an authoritarian regime lasting four decades whose legacies marked Spain’s transition into the current democratic system and its problematic relationship with discontented sectors.

HIST 1262F. Women, Gender, and Feminism in Early Modern Italy.

This course explores the variety of Italian women’s histories, issues of gender and sexuality, and ingenious responses to circumvent the social, economic, religious, and political limitations placed upon them during the early modern period (1400-1800). Italian women produced some of the foundational texts of historical feminism, the intellectual and cultural movement that advanced the idea of equality across genders and the necessity of equal access to opportunity and education. This course surveys the alternatives proposed to the gender hierarchies of Italian society and will include selections from archival documents, letters, literature, treatises, and the visual arts. Taught in English. P

HIST 1262M. Truth on Trial: Justice in Italy, 1400-1800.

Why do we think that one human being can judge another? How did this activity, enshrined in legal and political systems, profoundly shape society? This course examines the changing face of justice, from the medieval ordeal to judicial torture; the expansion of inquisitorial and state law courts; and the critical role the judicial system played in shaping Italian society. Using Italy as a focus, the course explores how law courts defined social, political, scientific, and religious truth in the early modern period. P

HIST 1264M. Cultural History of the Netherlands in a Golden Age and a Global Age.

Between 1580 and 1690 two nations emerged in Europe from what had been one unified region. To the north, the Dutch Republic gained its independence from Spain and developed as a bastion of liberty, ideas in ferment, visuals arts, Calvinist faith, science, technology, global economic reach. To the south, the "loyal" Netherlands, now Belgium, returned to the Spanish and Catholic fold, but sustained its leading position in the arts, competed in global trade, and negotiated a new compromise of government. In this course we present an interdisciplinary, comparative view of the "two" Netherlands and their legacy in the world. P

HIST 1266C. English History, 1529-1660.

Examines politics, religion, and society from the Protestant Reformation to the Puritan Revolution-a period of rapid and dramatic change when the world, for most English people, was turned upside down. Considers the experiences and concerns of ordinary men and women, as well as the elite. Takes in Scotland, Ireland, and the great migration to New England. P

HIST 1266D. British History, 1660-1800.

A survey of British history from the restoration of monarchy to the Wilkes affair and the loss of the American colonies. In addition to political developments such as the Glorious Revolution and the rise of party, examines political ideology (including the great political theorist, John Locke) and various themes in social history (such as crime, popular protest, the sexual revolution, and the experiences of women). P

HIST 1267. The Global British Empire, 1600-The Present.

This course charts the long history and continuing legacies of the British Empire, an entity that has transformed every single continent over the last four centuries and is widely associated with the makings of the modern world. We examine how and why a powerful and expansive British Empire emerged and sustained itself. Equally, we zoom in on the regular contestation and even outright rebellion that this transcontinental polity inspired. This course is an opportunity to think connectively and comparatively about historical experiences in America, India, the Caribbean, and Africa among multiple other British imperial spaces. We will track the making and unmaking of the British Empire by studying the evolution of global trade, labor regimes including slavery, the consumption of commodities such as sugar, as well as new ideas about governance, race, and identity.

HIST 1268A. The Rise of the Russian Empire.

This course provides a broad survey of Russian history from Kievan Rus' to the Crimean War. Topics include the rise of Moscow, the Time of Troubles, the reforms of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, the Napoleonic Wars, and the conservative reign of Nicholas I. The following themes are emphasized in the lectures and readings: the changing stratification of society; the expansion of the Russian empire; Russia and the West (including diplomatic and cultural relations); economic development; and the origins and growth of the Russian intelligentsia and radical opposition to the autocracy. P

HIST 1268B. Russia in the Era of Reforms, Revolutions, and World Wars.

This course examines the rapid industrialization, modernization, and urbanization of Russia from the era of the "Great Reforms" (1860s) through the Second World War. We will examine both the growing discontentment among the population with autocracy's efforts to maintain power and the Bolshevik effort to recreate the economy, society, and everyday life. Topics will include Russian Marxism and socialism, terrorism, the Russian revolutions of 1917, the rise and consolidation of Soviet socialism, famine, the red terror, and World War II.

HIST 1268C. The Collapse of Socialism and the Rise of New Russia.

This course examines late Soviet socialism, the collapse of the USSR, and the emergence of the new Russia. The following themes are emphasized in lectures and readings: the major features of de-Stalinization; Soviet and Russian foreign policy during and after the Cold War; the domestic and international causes and consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union; and the emergence of a new Russian government and national identity during the 1990s and early 2000s.

HIST 1270C. German History, 1806-1945.

This course examines the development of German history from the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire to the end of World War II. During that time the German states went from being a sleepy backwater to being the conquerors of Europe, finally conquered themselves by the Allied Forces. Through lecture, readings, and discussion we will examine post-Napoleonic Germany, Prussia’s role in uniting Germany, the Wilhelmine Empire, the Weimar Republic, and finally National Socialism. The class will take into account politics, economics, war, and culture in painting a full picture of the development of a distinct German state and society.

HIST 1272C. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity? The History of Modern France.

This course follows the history of France from the time of Louis XIV to the present, focusing on social and cultural trends, with particular emphasis on the boundaries of French national identity. It asks who belonged to the French nation at key moments in French history, including the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic era, industrialization, imperialism, and the two world wars, as well as the complex questions presently facing France. We will examine how inclusions and exclusions during these moments reveal larger themes within French history, such as those dealing with race, class, gender, immigration, and anti-Semitism, amongst others.

HIST 1272D. The French Revolution.

This course aims to provide a basic factual knowledge of the French Revolution, an understanding of the major historiographic debates about the revolutionary period, and a sense of the worldwide impact of events occurring in late-eighteenth century France. A strong historiographic focus will direct our attention to the gendered nature of the revolutionary project; the tension between liberty and equality that runs throughout French history; the intersection of race and citizenship in the Revolution; and the plausibility of competing social, political, and cultural interpretations of the Revolution.

HIST 1272E. Paris: Sacred and Profane, Imagined and Real.

Paris has been called the capital of modernity, the capital of the nineteenth century, and the capital of the black Atlantic. This course explores how Paris grew from a small settlement into a vast city with an enormous global impact. Covering the settlement of the Celtic Parisii in the mid-third century BCE through the present, the course investigates the dynamic relationship between urban space, public activism, racism, and colonialism. It also considers who has been excluded from the city’s complex mythology and how these myths impacted experiences of the “other” (including people of color, low-income people, Jewish people, and women).

HIST 1280. Death from Medieval Relics to Forensic Science.

From CSI: Crime Scene Investigation to Ghost Busters to murder mysteries, western society finds death and dead bodies both fascinating and horrifying. This lecture course considers how the western world has dealt with life’s most fundamental truth – all humans die – by looking at the history of death and dead bodies from the Middle Ages up to the early twentieth century. Topics include the worship of Christian relics, Catholic and Protestant conceptions of the “good death,” body snatching and dissection, society’s fascination with murder, execution as legalized death, forensic science and dead bodies, and ghosts. P

HIST 1310. History of Brazil.

This course charts the history of Brazil from Portuguese contact with the indigenous population in 1500 to the present. It examines the countrys political, economic, social, intellectual, and cultural development to understand the causes, interactions, and consequences of conflict, change, and continuity within Brazilian society.

HIST 1312. Brazil: From Abolition to Emerging Global Power.

How did Brazil transform itself from a slave society in 1888 to rising international economic and political force? This course will examine the history of Brazil from the end of slavery to the present. We will analyze the reasons for the fall of the Empire and the establishment of a Republic, the transformations that took place as immigrants arrived from Europe, Japan, and the Middle East in the early twentieth century, and the search for new forms of national identity. We will study the rise of authoritarian regimes and the search for democratic governance in more recent years.

HIST 1313. Brazilian Biographies.

How do the famous Brazilian singers Carmen Miranda and Caetano Veloso fit into any comprehensive understanding of Brazilian history? Do the life stories of the eighteenth-century freed slave Xica da Silva or the twentieth-century favela dweller and best-selling author Carolina Maria de Jesus represent unique characters or larger social phenomena of different times and places? How have Brazilian and foreign authors written the history of Brazil through portraits of individuals. This course will examine life stories of Brazilians of all races and social classes through texts, documents, and films to see what these biographical portrayals reveal about Brazilian history/culture. P

HIST 1320. Rebel Island: Cuba, 1492-Present.

Cuba, once the jewel in the Spanish imperial crown, has been home to some of the world's most radical revolutions and violent retrenchments. For two centuries, its influence has spread well beyond its borders, igniting the passion of nationalists and internationalists as well as the wrath of imperial aggression. This course traces the history of Cuba from its colonial origins through the present, foregrounding the revolutionary imaginary that has sustained popular action-from anti-slavery rebellions through the Cuban Revolution and its discontents-in addition to the historical processes that have forged one of the world's most vibrant socio-cultural traditions.

HIST 1331. The Rise and Fall of the Aztecs: Mexico, 1300-1600.

This course will chart the evolution of the Mexica (better known as the Aztecs) from nomads to the dominant people of central Mexico; examine their political, cultural, and religious practices (including human sacrifice); explore the structure and limitations of their empire; and analyze their defeat by Spanish conquistadors and their response to European colonization. We will draw upon a variety of pre- and post-conquest sources, treating the Aztecs as a case study in the challenges of ethnohistory. P

HIST 1332. Reform and Rebellion: Mexico, 1700-1867.

This course focuses on Mexico's difficult transition from colony to nation. We will examine the key political, social, economic, and cultural developments during this period. Major topics will include: the paradoxical eighteenth century, which saw Mexico emerge as the most prosperous region of the Spanish empire, even as social and economic tensions deepened; the outbreak of peasant rebellions in the early nineteenth century; the elite-led movement for independence; the economic decline and political turmoil of the early republic; foreign interventions by the United States and France; and the rise of the Liberals as Mexico's dominant political force. P

HIST 1333. The Mexican Revolution.

To study the Mexican Revolution is to examine the sweeping history of Modern Mexico: from the Liberal reforms of Benito Juárez to the enduring power of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI); from peasant revolutionary Emiliano Zapata to his namesake Zapatistas of Chiapas; from Pancho Villa’s mass revolutionary army to transnational mystic Teresita Urrea; from the landlord Francisco Madero who led the insurgency to Lázaro Cárdenas who enacted land and labor reforms; from the constant flows of migrants crossing the border back and forth to Mexico’s defiance against Trump’s wall.

HIST 1340. History of the Andes from Incas to Evo Morales.

Before the Spanish invaded in the 1530s, western South America was the scene of the largest state the New World had ever known, Tawantinsuyu, the Inca empire. During almost 300 years of colonial rule, the Andean provinces were shared by the "Republic of Spaniards" and the "Republic of Indians" - two separate societies, one dominating and exploiting the other. Today the region remains in many ways colonial, as Quechua- and Aymara-speaking villagers face a Spanish-speaking state, as well as an ever-more-integrated world market, the pressures of neoliberal reform from international banks, and the melting of the Andean glaciers.

HIST 1350. States, Kingdoms and Atlantic Trade.

Beginning in the 15th century Portuguese maritime explorers ventured down the coast of West Africa in search of ivory, animal skins, spices, gold. Fueled by accounts of Muslim explorers before them, they encountered dynamic African kingdoms that rivaled their own. In turn encounters with Europeans caused a shift in African polities causing the economies of African trade to shift from antiquated Saharan trade routes to the Atlantic Coast. As the demand for labor in the American colonies began to increase, transatlantic African trade began to include the continent's most precious commodity, captive African bodies. This course delves into the complex relationship between African and European polities and the business of transatlantic slavery in the burgeoning colonies of the Americas from 1400 to 1881, when European powers met in Berlin to discuss the division of the continent for its valuable resources.

HIST 1360. Amazonia from the Prehuman to the Present.

This course merging lecture and discussion will examine the fascinating and contested history of the largest rainforest on the planet and one of the world’s most complex fluvial ecosystems: Amazonia, in equatorial South America, from its pre-human history to the present day. The course will include readings and discussions on the region’s ecological origins; the social history of its diverse Indigenous populations, immigrant groups, and African-descended populations; exploration myths and European colonial projects; and more recent efforts to exploit and protect Amazonia’s extraordinary natural and human resources. The course will use tools and resources from archaeology, anthropology, biology, and social and cultural history, and will also examine popular representations of the Amazon through novels, newspapers, podcasts, and film.

HIST 1370. The United States and Brazil: Tangled Relations.

This lecture course explores the complex relations between Brazil and the United States from the American Revolution to the present. Through the use of documents, films, literature, and historical monographs, we will examine the diplomatic, political, economic, and cultural interactions between the largest nations in the Americas, paying particular attention to the growing influence of the United States. We will focus on the “Special Relationship” that developed during World War II, the effects of Washington’s foreign policy during the Cold War, U.S. involvement over the course of the military dictatorship, and new forms of interactions after the return to democracy.

HIST 1381. Latin American History and Film: Memory, Narrative and Nation.

This course is centered around the relationship between history and storytelling. It takes as a starting point that history is itself political, and asks that we always consider both how and why we tell stories about the past. Together, we will critically examine a broad range of films and texts that engage with the Latin American past, and explore what they have to say about how gender and sexuality, imperialism, slavery, the church, revolution and repression shaped the region. How do films represent the past, and how do we approach “historical film”? How have narrative and documentary films been used as in various social and political struggles? Each week, we will examine documentary, narrative, or experimental films in relation to other modes of historical storytelling, from academic historiography to graphic novels, first person testimonios, memoirs, oral histories, and journalism.

HIST 1440. The Ottomans: Faith, Law, Empire.

This course explores the rise and fall of the longest-lived Muslim dynasty in history, the Ottoman Empire (1299-1923). From Turkish nomads in Asia Minor to multiethnic empire spanning three continents, the Ottomans were the premier power of southern Europe, northern Africa, and the eastern Mediterranean in the early modern world. From medieval “Turko-Persia” to the catastrophes of World War I, we shall engage difficult historical questions surrounding law and empire, religion and secularism, nationalism and statebuilding, and the legacy of Ottoman rule in and outside today’s Turkey—from Sarajevo to Baghdad, Crimea to Mecca, and “where East meets West”: Constantinople/Istanbul.

HIST 1441. 'Neither of the East nor the West': The Ottoman Empire in Asian, African, and European History.

The Ottoman Empire (1299—1923) was the longest-lived and most powerful Islamicate dynasty in history. From nomadic Turkic warriors in Asia to multiethnic empire straddling three continents, the Ottomans became the premier power in the Mediterranean world and the last to single-handedly govern most of today’s Middle East/MENA. Yet, Ottoman formation and evolution—fusing Roman, Mongol, and Persianate imperial heritages, as well as Muslim, Christian, and Jewish faith communities—remain little understood. This course explores West Asia, Southern Europe, and North Africa through the prism of Ottoman history from medieval beginnings to modern legacies, including those surviving Ottoman partition after WWI. We shall engage difficult questions surrounding law and empire, religion and secularism, nationalism and state-building, and the legacies of Ottoman rule in and outside today’s Turkey—from Bosnia to Baghdad, Ukraine to Yemen, and “where East meets West”: Constantinople/Istanbul.

HIST 1445. The Making of the Ottoman World, 15th - 20th Centuries.

This course treats some of the major themes of Ottoman state and society, one of the major empires of the world out of which many new polities in the Balkans, Anatolia, the Middle East and North Africa emerged during the twentieth century. At the center of the course is the transformation of the “classical” Ottoman state to the early modern and modern through the many shapes and forms it has taken. We will be covering the beginnings from the 15th century and end with the analysis of the making of the modern Ottoman society in the early 20th century.

HIST 1455. The Making of the Modern Middle East.

From North Africa to Afghanistan, Turkey to the Arabian peninsula, the goal of this course is to provide students with a robust background in modern Middle Eastern history, broadly defined. We begin in the long nineteenth century, an era of intense social and economic transformation that led to the collapse of the Ottoman empire and emergence of a new state system, primarily under British and French colonial rule. We then explore forces shaping the contemporary region, including nationalism, oil, regional conflicts and the Cold War, Islamism and mass politics, and military interventions by the US and other world powers. M

HIST 1456. Bankrupt: An Economic and Financial History of the Middle East in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

This course critically examines the economic, and particularly, the financial history of the modern Middle East in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is structured chronologically and thematically. It starts in the mid-19th century by examining the role of European states, as well as private European investment firms and oil companies, in facilitating the colonization of the region via loans, capitulations, and extractive concession agreements. It then shifts to the post-colonial period, studying how western oil companies, banks, investment firms, and multi-national organizations shaped the trajectories of the newly-independent states in the Middle East.

HIST 1457. Understanding the Palestinians.

Palestinians are largely absent in histories of Palestine/Israel. This course introduces new scholarship that draws on local sources, oral history, ethnographic research to help us explore three fundamental questions: Who are the Palestinians? What do they want? And why has the Palestinian question become a central issue in global debates about the making of the modern world and its potential futures? The course covers the modern period (1750 to the present) and engages larger themes of capitalist transformation, imperialism, settler-colonialism, nationalism, and indigeneity.

HIST 1460. Modern Turkey: Empire, Nation, Republic.

This course will treat some of the major themes of Turkish history and society, one of world’s Muslim majority countries today. Since Turkey unfolded from the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, Turkish nationalism and its many shapes and forms has been at the center of the country’s uneasy history of democratization. Mapping the political, socio-economic and cultural landscape, this ventures through Turkish history to study state and society through political thought and economy of democracy, exploring secularism, Islam, feminism, Kurdish question, memory and popular culture.

HIST 1470. Legal History in the Middle East.

This course is devoted to exploring questions of law and legal history in the Middle East/eastern Mediterranean region from late antiquity to the present. Emphasis will be on the Islamic legal tradition from medieval to modern times, including intersection-and-friction points between the shari‘a and Roman, Persianate, and Mongol imperial legacies, and fellow Abrahamic faiths. From the earliest schools of Islamic jurisprudence to late Ottoman constitutionalism, and the sociolegal impact of the 1979 Iranian Revolution to the Arab Spring uprisings, our goal is to explore the depth and diversity of legal cultures and institutions across different epochs of Middle East history.

HIST 1501. The American Revolution.

This course will explore the period of the American Revolution from the 1760s through the turn of the nineteenth century. Taking a broad view of the conflict and its consequences, we will situate the American colonies in their North American and Atlantic context, examine the material and ideological concerns that prompted the Revolutionary War, and trace the consequences of the conflict for the nation that followed. Students will be invited to look beyond the Founders to the experiences of women, slaves, Native Americans, common soldiers, and Loyalists. P

HIST 1502. The Early Republic United States.

This course explores the politics and culture of the United States between the ratification of the Constitution in 1789 and the financial crisis of the late 1830s. The establishment of the federal government still left crucial questions unresolved: the characteristics of national identity, the boundaries of citizenship, the legitimacy of slavery, and the tense relationship between capitalism, colonialism, and democracy. Relying on primary sources and secondary scholarship, the course will revisit familiar debates over warfare, sovereignty, and public policy, while also introducing students to a wide range of critical voices seeking to fulfill the idealistic possibilities of the American Revolution.

HIST 1503. Antebellum America and the Road to Civil War.

Surveys society, culture, and politics between 1800 and 1860. Topics include the social order of slavery, the market revolution and its impact, abolition and other evangelical reform movements, and the development of sectional identities.

HIST 1505. Making America Modern.

This course surveys a crucial period in American history between the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of World War I. During this time, the United States transitioned from a relatively fragmented, traditional, and largely agricultural society into one that was remarkably diverse, increasingly urban, and highly industrialized. In surveying this important transitional period, we will pay particular attention to far-reaching changes in the nation's business and economic life, its social movements, as well as its cultural developments, all with an eye to understanding how the United States became one of the world's most commanding economic, political, and cultural powers.

HIST 1507. American Babylon: Crisis and Reckoning in the Postwar United States, 1945-1980.

This course explores the major cultural and political developments in U.S. history in the tumultuous postwar decades: liberalism, radicalism, and conservatism; race, class, gender, and sexuality in shaping national life; the Cold War and the fate of the New Deal; rise of the New Right; and the making of a second gilded age, among others. We consider postwar history in three broad periods: One, the consolidation of “Cold War liberalism” under international and domestic anticommunism through the 1960s; Two, a period we might call the “second Reconstruction,” between 1954 and 1973, when race-, gender-, and sexuality-based movements produced a social and legal revolution on behalf of equality and human rights; and Three, a period of backlash to the rights revolution that overlapped with the rise of an oligarchic phase of capitalism known as “neoliberalism,” between the 1970s and the present.

HIST 1511. Sinners, Saints, and Heretics: Religion in Early America.

This course considers the major people, events, and issues in the history of religion in North America, from pre-contact Native cosmologies to the tumultuous events of the Civil War. Attention will be given to "religion as lived" by ordinary people, as well as to the ways that religion shaped (or not) larger cultural issues such as immigration, public policy, social reform, warfare, democracy, slavery, and women's rights. Prior knowledge of religion in North America is not required; there are no prerequisites to this course, and it is open to all students. P

HIST 1512. First Nations: The People and Cultures of Native North America to 1800.

This course explores the history of North America through the eyes of the original inhabitants from pre-contact times up through 1800. Far from a simplistic story of European conquest, the histories of Euroamericans and Natives were and continue to be intertwined in surprising ways. Although disease, conquest, and death are all part of this history, this course also tell another story: the big and small ways in which these First Nations shaped their own destiny, controlled resources, utilized local court systems, and drew on millennia-old rituals and practices to sustain their communities despite the crushing weight of colonialism. P

HIST 1513. U.S. Cultural History from Revolution to Reconstruction.

What does it mean to survey a country's history? In this course, it means setting out in several different directions in order to determine the form, extent, and situation of the United States from the 1750s to the 1870s. It means looking carefully at the nation's past through its cultural productions (ideas, beliefs, and customs expressed in print, material, and visual forms). And it means paying close attention to the details. Each week, students will examine one object, text, or idea in order to track broader developments in American history during this time period.

HIST 1514. Capitalism, Slavery and the Economy of Early America.

The simultaneous expansion of capitalism and slavery witnessed intense struggle over the boundaries of the market, self-interest, and economic justice. This course traces those arguments from Colonization through Reconstruction and asks how common people navigate the shifting terrain of economic life. The approach is one of cultural and social history, rather than the application of economic models to the past.

HIST 1515. American Slavery.

This lecture course will address the history of slavery in America. We will trace the emergence of slavery in the New World, with a heavy emphasis on slavery in the U.S. South, and a focus on the relationship of slavery to the emergence of systems of racial and gendered power. The course is broad in scope, beginning with the emergence of the slave trade and concluding with a look forward to the ways that the history of slavery continues to impact the way race and gender (as well as sexuality and class) structure our lives today.

HIST 1520. Women in Early America.

This course examines the major social and cultural developments of early America through the lens of women’s history. We will explore differences among representations of women, constructions and ideals of womanhood, and lived experiences, as we engage such topics as: cross-cultural exchange and conflict; citizenship and enslavement; work and cultural expression; and women’s varying degrees of access within social, civic and legal arenas. Relying heavily on sources like letters, diaries, legal records, and artifacts, we will work to identify strategies and best practices for recovering the voices and experiences of early American women buried in the archive.

HIST 1530. The Intimate State: The Politics of Gender, Sex, and Family in the U.S., 1873-Present.

Examines the "intimate politics" of gender norms, sex and sexuality, and family structure in American history, from the 1870s to the present, focusing on law and political conflict. Topics include laws regulating sex and marriage; social norms governing gender roles in both private and public spheres; the range of political perspectives (from feminist to conservative) on sex, sexuality, and family, and the relationship of gender to notions of nationhood and the role of the modern state. Some background in history strongly recommended.

HIST 1531. Movement Politics in Modern America.

This course explores the history of political movements in the United States from Reconstruction through Trumpism—politics from the bottom up, a history of “popular politics.” The course begins with emancipation and the rise of industrial capitalism in the late nineteenth century and the civil rights, populist, and reform politics that emerged in response. The course concludes the New Right and transformations in political culture from Reaganism to Trumpism. In between, we consider civil rights, progressivism, feminism(s), the New Deal coalition, anti-communism, Black freedom, the New Left, second wave feminism, and gay rights. Major themes include: conservatism and liberalism across the twentieth century; race, class, and gender in shaping the nation’s politics; the relationship between social movements and political power; the democratic promise and the limitations of political movements and of the U.S. political system more broadly.

HIST 1532. Black Freedom Struggle Since 1945.

Examines the extended history of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. with a range of primary sources. Starting at World War II, the course considers the roles of the courts, the government, organizations, local communities, and individuals in the ongoing struggle for African American equality, focusing on African American agency. Sources include photographs, documentaries, movies, letters, speeches, autobiography, and secondary readings. Must have taken at least one post-1865 U.S. history course demonstrating a foundation in this time period.

HIST 1533. Cities and Inequality Since 1920: The United States.

This lecture course takes up the relationship between cities and social and economic inequality—especially racial, but also other forms of social disadvantage along lines of class, gender, sexuality, indigeneity, and geography. Its focus is the urban history of American cities, suburbs, and towns and how urban development since the advent of the motor-car suburb in the 1920s shaped American social life. Students will learn about and explore topics such as zoning, racial redlining and other forms of segregation, real estate markets, the home building industry, urban public policy and law, urban leisure, transportation, and many others. At the center of the course is the question of how people live in dense connectivity and community and what the history of the modern American city can tell us about the nature and durability of social inequality.

HIST 1550. American Urban History, 1600-1870.

Both a survey covering urbanization in America from colonial times to the present, and a specialized focus exploring American history from an urban frame of reference. Examines the premodern, "walking" city from 1600-1870. Includes such topics as cities in the Revolution and Civil War, the development of urban services, westward expansion, and social structure. P

HIST 1551. American Urban History, 1870-1965.

A survey with a specialized focus exploring American history from an urban frame of reference. Topics include the social consequences of the modern city, politics, reform, and federal-city relations.

HIST 1553. Empires in America to 1890.

In this class, we’ll consider some of the forms of empire-building by various groups of indigenous and colonizing peoples in what is now the United States in order to understand the development of imperial U.S. power in both domestic and international contexts. Rather than resting upon a foregone conclusion of European settler colonial “success,” the course explores the contingent and incomplete nature of empire-building even within unbalanced power relationships.

HIST 1554. American Empire Since 1890.

This survey of twentieth-century US history through the lens of racial capitalism and empire will focus on the United States as a settler state whose power also relies on overseas colonialism and free trade imperialism. Topics include: ideology and political culture, labor and extraction, social movements and resistance, knowledge production and the military-industrial-complex, neoliberal scarcity and financialization.

HIST 1570. American Legal and Constitutional History.

History of American law and constitutions from European settlement to the present. Not a comprehensive survey but a study of specific issues or episodes connecting law and history, including morals and marriage laws, slavery, contests over Native American lands, delineations of race and gender, economic regulation, and the construction of a right to privacy.

HIST 1571. The Intellectual History of Black Women.

This course will introduce students to the intellectual productions and theoretical traditions of African American women. Focused on the canonical texts of African American women, this class gestures toward diaspora as well. Moving chronologically from the history of slavery to the present will require that we simultaneously confront the question of what counts as “intellectual” history. Thus even as we will read the written words of black feminists across time, we will also call into question what Barbara Christian calls “the race for theory,” turning also to resistance practices, material culture, and bodily performance as sites of black feminist theorization.

HIST 1572. America Unbound: New Approaches to U.S. International and Diplomatic History.

Traditionally understood as a field studying the activities of ambassadors, diplomatic history has recently begun to examine the role of marginalized agents in the making of international relations. This methodological shift entails reimagining the place of the United States in a globalizing world. In line with these developments, this course reconsiders the broader international stakes of what we tend to regard as “internal” developments in U.S. history (for instance, the American Revolution, the Civil War, the New Deal, or the civil rights movement). Reconceiving international relations in this integrated way emphasizes how crucial interactions with Native American, European, Latin American, African, and Asian nations were to negotiating such matters as the nature of political authority, the role of race and gender in structuring sociopolitical life, or the relationship between citizenship rights and state violence over the course of U.S. history.

HIST 1620. Resisting Empire: Gandhi and the Making of Modern South Asia.

Gandhi's India tracks the emergence and transformations of British colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent, the insurgencies and the cultural and economic critiques that shaped anti-colonial nationalism, the conflicts that fueled religious differences and the ideas that shaped non-violent civil disobedience as a unique form of resistance. With readings from Gandhi, Marx and Tagore, amongst others, this course interrogates relationships between power and knowledge, histories from below, as well as violence and political mobilizations that would, by the mid-twentieth century, bring down an empire and create a bloody and enduring divide with the birth of two nation-states.

HIST 1640. Inequality + Change: South Asia after 1947.

With a focus on inequality and change this lecture course will survey South Asia's history post-1947, with the end of colonial rule and the making of nation-states. With a historical attention to 'inequality', we will interrogate the inequalities cast by rural poverty, environment, religion, caste, gender and ethnicity and the remarkable contestations of people in the region that have challenged state power, and have thus shaped South Asia's postcolonial histories. We will particularly focus on histories from below, and engage historical and literary writings, newspapers as well as documentary films.

HIST 1730. "Cannibals", "Barbarians" and "Noble Savages": Travel and Ethnography in the Early Modern World.

This seminar will trace the growth of European images of the “other” in early modern Africa, Europe and the Americas. Using the tropes of “cannibal”, “barbarian” and “noble savage”, it explores evolving theories about human nature, human difference and race. Alongside critical analyses drawn from several disciplines, the main readings will be primary sources. These vivid, enigmatic accounts are both portraits of a world alien to the writer, and also mirror the writer’s own culture.

HIST 1731. Diplomatic History of Abolitionism, 1760-1865.

This course deploys insights and metholodogies from "new" diplomatic history to account for a landmark process which shaped the birth of the modern world, the abolition of slavery and the slave trade. We will not only seek to account for how changes in diplomatic practice conditioned the struggle for abolition, but also for how new arguments and strategies for the abolition of slavery transformed the diplomatic world in ways which still reverberate in the actions and institutions of contemporary international bodies, from NGOs to national embassies and the United Nations.

HIST 1735. Slavery in the Early Modern World.

There were multiple forms of slavery in the Early Modern world. We will look at three major systems: Mediterranean slavery and the Barbary Corsairs, Black Sea slavery and slave elites of the Ottoman Empire, and the Atlantic triangular trade. We will examine the religious, political, racial, and economic bases for these slave systems, and compare the experiences of individual slaves and slave societies. Topics discussed include gender and sexuality (e.g. the institution of the Harem and the eunuchs who ran it), the connection between piracy and slavery, and the roles of slavery in shaping the Western world. P

HIST 1736. A Global History of the Reformation.

2017 marked the 500th anniversary of the publication of Martin Luther’s “95 Theses,” an event often considered to have caused the Reformation in Europe. This course explores the religious reforms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in a global context, examining how the interaction of peoples from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas shaped both contemporary debates and their enduring legacies. Bound up in Catholic and Protestant controversies about how humanity should interact with the divine were fundamental reappraisals of how to define who counted as human, the desirability/possibility of cultural pluralism, and religion’s place in public life. P

HIST 1740. Capitalism, Land and Water: A World History: 1350-1848.

The choice of how we allocate land and water shapes famine, drought, war, homelessness and poverty. Over the centuries, utopians and empires have looked to very different systems of allocation, from village communalism to plantation systems to state provision of infrastructure to free-market systems. This course mixes histories of political economy, theology, literature, and anthropology, asking how imaginary landscapes become the material realities of farm and highway. Themes will include the rise of modern, surveying, engineering, cities, infrastructure systems, and land reform. It will ask about the consequences of history in an era of environmental disaster, famine, mortgages, and evictions.

HIST 1741. Capitalism, Land and Water: A World History: 1848 to the present.

The choice of how we allocate land and water shapes famine, drought, war, homelessness and poverty. Over the centuries, utopians and empires have looked to very different systems of allocation, from village communalism to plantation systems to state provision of infrastructure to free-market systems. While an economist or political scientist might study these regimes through abstraction, the historian dives into the social context of different systems, reading government documents, social protests, as well as architecture, maps, and the landscape itself, as an archive that testifies as to the nature of consent, participation, and resistance in a political system.

HIST 1800. Religion and Power in North America to 1865.

This course explores the relationship of various forms of religion and power in North America from the pre-Columbian period through the US Civil War and Reconstruction. We explore the confluence and conflict of Indigenous, African, and European beliefs and practices. Topics include: native agency and settler colonialism; race and slavery; war and politics; gender and patriarchy; soul-craft and statecraft; domination and empowerment.

HIST 1820A. Environmental History.

Environmental history examines the changing relationship between human beings and their physical surroundings. We will actively question the boundary between nature and culture, showing how social and natural history mutually inform one another. We will do so by asking three interrelated questions. First, how has the material context in which history unfolded impacted the development of our culture, society, and economy? Second, how and why did people’s ideas and representations of the natural world change over time? Finally, in what ways and to what ends have human beings actively though not always intentionally altered their physical surroundings?

HIST 1820B. Environmental History of East Asia.

With a fifth of the world’s population on a twentieth of its land, the ecosystems of China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam have been thoroughly transformed by human activity. This course will explore the human impact on the environment from the first farmers to the industrial present, exploring how wildlife was eliminated by the spread of agriculture, how states colonized the subcontinent, how people rebuilt water systems, and how modern communism and capitalism have accelerated environmental change. Each week we will examine primary sources like paintings, essays, maps and poems. The course assumes no background in Asian or environmental history.

HIST 1820C. Sovereignty and Ecology: Law, Land, and Environmental Change.

Can law change rivers? Do rivers shape law? This course uses the Yukon River—running 2000 miles through Arctic and Subarctic Alaska and Canada—to explore how Indigenous, Russian and British Imperial, and nation-state sovereignties and the legal ideas they contain interacted with ecological and social life. From salmon and migratory birds to wildfires, plastic pollution, and climate change, the course covers the 1800s-2000s. Tuesday lectures will alternate with collaborative readings & short writing assignments based on primary sources, including oral histories, court transcripts, and government documents on Thursdays, with the goal of building new ways of linking law, sovereignty, and ecological change. Readings will be supplemented with secondary works of history, anthropology, theory, ecology, and guest visits from regional experts and Elders. Previous coursework in history, Native American & Indigenous Studies, or ecology is a plus but not required.

HIST 1820G. Nature on Display.

This course will explore the different ways in which people have represented the natural world in a variety of context and time periods from the 16th to the 21st century. We will look at the depiction of nature in museums, gardens, documentary films, and municipal parks, as well as the science of biology and ecology. As we do so, we will explore our changing attitudes towards nature and the place that we occupy in it, thinking through the complex and philosophically fraught question of what nature is, and what, if anything, distinguishes it from the rest of our world.

HIST 1825F. Nature, Knowledge, Power in Early Modern Europe.

This course examines the creation and circulation of scientific knowledge in early modern Europe, ca. 1450-1600. We will explore the practices, materials, and ideas not just of astronomers and natural philosophers, but also of healers, botanists, astrologers, alchemists, and artisans. How did social, political, economic, and artistic developments during this period reshape how naturalists proposed to learn about, collect, manipulate, and profit from nature? We will also consider the ways in which colonial projects forced Europeans to engage with other “ways of knowing” and rethink classical knowledge systems. P

HIST 1825H. Science, Medicine and Technology in the 17th Century.

This course examines the development of science and related fields in the period sometimes called 'the scientific revolution'. It will both introduce the student to what happened, and ask some questions about causes and effects. The new science is often associated with figures like Harvey, Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, Leeuwenhoek, and Newton. But it is also associated with new ways of assessing nature that are mingled with commerce. The question of the relationship between developments in Europe and elsewhere is therefore also explored. P

HIST 1825J. History of Artificial Intelligence.

The course will trace the origins and trajectory of ideas about artificial intelligence, starting with the “active intellect” of Aristotle, early analog computers and automata, Ada Lovelace’s “calculus of the nervous system,” through the “general intellect” and “machine capital” of Karl Marx, Karel Čapek’s “Universal Robots,” the “Turing test,” “cyberpositivity” and Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto,” and concepts like “swarm intelligence,” “singularity,” and the “black box” problem. Sources will encompass a range of disciplinary approaches (philosophy, sociology, computer science, etc.), formats (text, film, graphic novel), and genres including Japanese anime and Afrofuturism.

HIST 1825L. The Roots of Modern Science.

This course explores the ways theories of physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics grew in relation to the natural, cultural and social worlds of the 18th and 19th centuries. There are no formal pre-requisites for the course, which is designed to be equally open and accessible to science and humanities students.

HIST 1825M. Science at the Crossroads.

This course will look closely at the dramatic developments that fundamentally challenged Western Science between 1859 and the advent of the Second World War in the 1930s. Its primary focus will be on a variety of texts written in an effort to understand and interpret the meanings of fundamentally new ideas including from the biological side--evolutionary theory, genetic theory, and eugenics; from the physical side relativity theory, and quantum mechanics. The class should be equally accessible to students whose primary interests lie in the sciences and those who are working in the humanities.

HIST 1825S. Science and Capitalism.

We will explore the longstanding relationship between science and commerce from the 17th century to our own asking when the modern notion of science as a disinterested pursuit of objective truth took root. We will also explore how knowledge of the natural world has been shaped by personal, financial, and other kinds of self-interest in a number of diverse contexts ranging from Galileo’s invention of the telescope in Renaissance Italy to to the patenting of genetically engineered organisms in today's world, paying special attention to the diverse mechanisms that have been devised to guard against fraud and disinformation.

HIST 1830B. Politics and the Psyche from Sigmund Freud to Donald Trump.

This combined lecture/discussion course explores the relation between politics and the emotions from Sigmund Freud’s discovery of the unconscious in Vienna around 1900 to the rise of populist and anti-democratic politics in the United States and Europe today. Historical knowledge generally focuses on civilizations, societies, systems, and events as they move, evolve, and transform through time. Psychoanalytic knowledge added the inner, mental (psychic) lives of people and cultures. Psychoanalysis redefined the humanities, the social sciences, and their relationships, paving the way as well for new approaches such as gender and sexuality studies. We will focus on the role of psychoanalysis as a political science, attuned to the modes of mass and media politics of the 20th and 21st centuries.

HIST 1830M. From Medieval Bedlam to Prozac Nation: Intimate Histories of Psychiatry and Self.

Humankind has long sought out keepers of its secrets and interpreters of its dreams: seers, priests, and, finally, psychiatrists. This lecture course will introduce students to the history of psychiatry in Europe, the United States, and beyond, from its pre-modern antecedents through the present day. Our focus will be on the long age of asylum psychiatry, but we will also consider the medical and social histories that intersect with, but are not contained by, asylum psychiatry: the rise of modern diagnostic systems, psychoanalysis, sexuality and stigma, race, eugenics, and pharmaceutical presents and futures.

HIST 1835A. Unearthing the Body: History, Archaeology, and Biology at the End of Antiquity.

How was the physical human body imagined, understood, and treated in life and death in the late ancient Mediterranean world? Drawing on evidence from written sources, artistic representations, and archaeological excavations, this class will explore this question by interweaving thematic lectures and student analysis of topics including disease and medicine, famine, asceticism, personal adornment and ideals of beauty, suffering, slavery, and the boundaries between the visible world and the afterlife, in order to understand and interpret the experiences of women, men, and children who lived as individuals—and not just as abstractions—at the end of antiquity. P

HIST 1901. Conspiracy? A Possible History of U.S. Politics and Culture.

From QAnon supporters to vaccine skeptics to adherents to false charges of a “stolen” presidential election, conspiracy theories have captured the imaginations of millions of Americans. Whether blaming social media platforms, partisan disinformation campaigns, or a full-scale crisis of democracy itself, in attempting to explain the apparently expanding reach of a conspiratorial habit of mind, observers have mostly stressed its recent origins. But what if we approached the present situation as a reflection of lasting tensions long visible in the history of American political culture? This class considers the history of conspiracy theories as a symptom of longstanding anxieties about the state of American democracy and the vitality of the modern public sphere. From the Salem Witch Trials to the January 6th insurrection, we adopt conspiracy as a lens through which to explore the historical relationship between power and knowledge.

HIST 1930A. History of American School Reform (EDUC 1200).

Interested students must register for EDUC 1200.

HIST 1930B. Academic Freedom on Trial: A Century of Campus Controversies (EDUC 1740).

Interested students must register for EDUC 1740.

HIST 1930C. The Century of Immigration (AMST 1611Z).

Interested students must register for AMST 1611Z.

HIST 1930D. Making America: Twentieth-Century U.S. Immigrant/Ethnic Literature (AMST 1611A).

Interested students must register for AMST 1611A.

HIST 1930E. Health and Healing in American History (GNSS 1960B).

Interested students must register for GNSS 1960B.

HIST 1930F. Renaissance Italy (ITAL 1360).

Interested students must register for ITAL 1360.

HIST 1930G. Black Freedom Struggle Since 1945 (AFRI 1090).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1090.

HIST 1930H. Teaching Topics in American History and Literature, 1945-1980 (EDUC 1620).

Interested students must register for EDUC 1620.

HIST 1930I. American Higher Education in Historical Context (EDUC 1730).

Interested students must register for EDUC 1730.

HIST 1930J. Word, Image and Power in Renaissance Italy (ITAL 1580).

Interested students must register for ITAL 1580.

HIST 1930L. The History of American Education (EDUC 1020).

Interested students must register for EDUC 1020.

HIST 1930M. History of African-American Education (EDUC 1050).

Interested students must register for EDUC 1050.

HIST 1930N. Germany, Alcohol, and the Global Nineteenth Century (GRMN 1661E).

Interested students must register for GRMN 1661E.

HIST 1930P. Development, Dependency, and Decline in Africa, 1950-2025 (AFRI 1640).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1640.

HIST 1930Q. History of the State of Israel: 1948 to the Present (JUDS 1711).

Interested students must register for JUDS 1711.

HIST 1930R. Roman History I: The Rise and Fall of an Imperial Republic (CLAS 1310).

Interested students must register for CLAS 1310.

HIST 1930S. Roman History II: The Roman Empire and Its Impact (CLAS 1320).

Interested students must register for CLAS 1320.

HIST 1930T. History of African-American Education (EDUC 1050).

Interested students must register for EDUC 1050.

HIST 1930U. Slavery in the Ancient World (CLAS 1120E).

Interested students must register for CLAS 1120E.

HIST 1930V. History of Zionism and the Birth of the State of Israel (JUDS 1712).

Interested students must register for JUDS 1712.

HIST 1930W. Introduction to Yiddish Culture (JUDS 1713).

Interested students must register for JUDS 1713.

HIST 1930Z. The Lower East Side: Immigration and Memory (JUDS 1730).

Interested students must register for JUDS 1730.

HIST 1931A. Kabbalah: Jews, Mysticism, and Magic (JUDS 1740).

Interested students must register for JUDS 1740.

HIST 1931B. Money, Power, Sex and Love: the Modern Jewish Family in Europe and America (JUDS 1722).

Interested students must register for JUDS 1722.

HIST 1931C. The End of Modern Jewish History (JUDS 1716).

Interested students must register for JUDS 1716.

HIST 1931D. The Fragility of Life in Ancient Greece(CLAS 1130).

Interested students must register for CLAS 1130.

HIST 1931E. The Culture of Death in Ancient Rome (CLAS 1420).

Interested students must register for CLAS 1420.

HIST 1931F. History of Greece from Archaic Times to the Death of Alexander (CLAS 1210).

Interested students must register for CLAS 1210.

HIST 1931G. Roman Religion (CLAS 1330).

Interested students must register for CLAS 1330.

HIST 1931H. 1968: A Year in Review (AFRI 1968).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1968.

HIST 1931L. Women, Gender and Feminism in Early Modern Europe (ITAL 1262).

Interested students must register for ITAL 1262.

HIST 1931Q. The Modern Middle East: Struggles for Power and Justice (MES 1111)..

Interested students must register for MES 1111.

HIST 1941A. Vietnam/American War: Nation, Literature, Memory, and the Cultural History of Conflict.

This course examines the cultural history of the “Vietnam War” (also known as the “American War”) from the perspective of Vietnam from 1954 to 1986. What were the political, ideological, civil, international, and colonial roots of conflict? How was war experienced on the ground in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam)? This class challenges the orthodox and American-centric views of the war by investigating how different actors contested the vision of a post-colonial Vietnamese nation. We will dedicate attention to literature, gender, migration, memory, and debates on historical contingency, agency, and complexity.

HIST 1947Q. History of Jews in Brazil.

This seminar examines the history of Jews in Brazil from early Portuguese colonial rule to the present, first focusing on the role of Jews and New Christians in early economic development. We then examine the Inquisition in Brazil, North African Jewish immigration in the mid-nineteenth century, Eastern European immigration in the twentieth-century, and the formation of communities and institutions over the last hundred years. We study Brazil’s foreign policy to Israel and other Middle Eastern countries. Finally, we consider the role of Jews in the opposition to the dictatorship and in the process of democratic consolidation.

HIST 1948. Global Palestine.

Global Palestine: Palestine is often imagined as being locked into a national conflict with Israel over a territory slightly larger than the state of Vermont. This class seeks to break out of this framework, considering Palestine within larger—global, even—structures and processes of colonialism and decolonization; forced displacement and securitization; and shifting modes of temporality and spatialization. The goal is not only to provide useful and nuanced approaches to Palestinian history, but to use the histories of Palestine and Palestinians to examine more closely the workings and effects of global dynamics.

HIST 1952A. World of Walden Pond: Transcendentalism as a Social and Intellectual Movement.

This course examines the 19th century phenomenon of Transcendentalism: this country’s most romanticized religious, philosophical, and literary movement. Focusing especially on Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller, we’ll examine the ideas of the Transcendentalists in the age of reform and evaluate the application of their principles to abolition, feminism, and nature. The central problem which they wrestled with will be the focus, too, of our investigations: the tension between individualism and conformity.

HIST 1952B. The Intimate State: The Politics of Gender, Sex, and Family in the U.S..

This seminar examines the “intimate politics” of gender, sexuality, and race in modern American history, focusing on law and political conflict from Reconstruction to the present. Its central concern is how the “private” (the intimate) is constructed and regulated by state power—by government. Topics include laws regulating sex and marriage; social norms governing gender roles in both private and public life; the range of political perspectives (from feminist to conservative) on sex, sexuality, and family; the transition from slavery to freedom; gender, sexuality, and U.S. empire; and the relationship of gender, sexuality, and race to notions of nationhood and the role of the modern state. Some background in history recommended but not required.

HIST 1953S. Costs of Resistance: History Through Film.

Through films and documentaries about places with contentious histories and ongoing political conflicts, this course will examine the solidarities and fractures that resistance against colonial and foreign control brings about in struggling societies. We will particularly engage with themes around sovereignty and self-determination, nationality and belongingness, and history and memory. Such questions not only have real-world stakes for peoples' survival and political identities, but also shape in profound ways the imaginations and practices of resistance and solidarity across the globe. Course materials will revolve around struggles of Palestinians, Irish, Kurds, Kashmiris, Tamils, and Indigenous Americans, among others. The primary texts in this course will be films and documentaries that we will watch together as a class. Each week or module will revolve around a one film or documentary. Select readings will supplement themes of each film or documentary.

HIST 1956A. Thinking Historically: A History of History Writing.

Philosopher George Santayana famously warned that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Ten years later, industrialist Henry Ford perhaps even more famously dismissed that notion: “History is more or less bunk.” What we mean by history and how we construct and use it are essential questions in all societies. Thinking Historically explores how we view and employ the past. The course examines major ways of interpreting the past through a survey of historians and methods and studies how history is produced, used, and misused, by professionals as well as by the public.

HIST 1956B. Rites of Power in Modern China.

Confucius and Mao shared at least one characteristic: a conviction that ritual is a critical part of exercising power. This course investigates the meaning of ritual and its importance in the formation of Chinese communities in the modern era, whether households, villages, empires, communes, regions, or nation-states. Topics include family and gender roles, imperial ceremonies, religious rites, revolutionary politics, cults of personality, grassroots movements, and popular protests. The class will collaboratively explore how political activists embraced new media (photographs, mass performance, music, film, video) and techniques (boycotts, mobilization, marches, purges) that merged ritual power with material action.

HIST 1956D. Jewish Humor, Commercial Entertainment, and Modern identity in 20th C America and Central Europe.

The seminar explores the relationship between humor, popular culture and Jewish ethnic identity in early 20th-century Europe and America. It argues that self-deprecating humor and satiric performance of Jewish stereotypes were not expressions of self-hatred, but complex cultural gestures that led to in integration within mainstream society. Topics to be considered are: the joke as a social gesture; the Jewish music hall as an urban institution; the politics of blackface in American Vaudeville; the East-European Jews in Hollywood.

HIST 1956R. Antisemitism and Modern History.

A new course in the history and theory of antisemitism from 1850 to the present with an emphasis on Europe and attention to the United States and the Middle East.

HIST 1956S. History of Artificial Intelligence.

The course will trace the origins and trajectory of ideas about artificial intelligence, starting with the "active intellect" of Aristotle, early analog computers and automata, Ada Lovelace's "calculus of the nervous system," through the "general intellect" and "machine capital" of Karl Marx, Karel Capek's "Universal Robots," the "Turing Test," "cyberpositivity" and Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto," and concepts like "swarm intelligence," "hive mind," "singularity," and the "master algorithm." Sources will encompass a range of disciplinary approaches (philosophy, sociology, computer science, etc.), formats (text, film, graphic novel), and genres including Japanese anime and Afrofuturism.

HIST 1958A. Archives of Desire: Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities in the Hispanophone World.

This course focuses on non-normative genders and sexualities in the Hispanophone world from the pre-colonial to the present period. It pays particular attention to affects, desires, and subjectivities captured in the historical testimonies of gender and sexual non- conformists. From the life of “The Nun Lieutenant” Catalina de Erauso or the 1901 lesbian marriage of Elisa and Marcela, to recent LatinX queer diasporas in the United States, we will discuss the historical tensions among Catholic morality, taxonomic and empiricist projects originated in the early modern era, and the embodied and emotional experiences of gender and sexual non- conformists.

HIST 1958C. History beyond Empires and Nations: Kashmir 1846-2020.

This course examines how histories of borderlands and margins, emanating from empires and nationstates, turn them into simultaneous objects of desire and control. Through the example of Kashmir—long conceptualized as a famed paradisaical land, which in the postcolonial era turned into a politically disputed and a heavily militarized zone—we will critically parse through orientalist, nationalist, academic, and popular histories about such regions. Building upon comparisons with similarly contested sites such as Palestine, the course will center a people’s understanding of the history of a place through an exploration of counter historical narratives, literary works, protest music, and poetry.

HIST 1960A. African Environmental History (AFRI 1060M).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1060M.

HIST 1960B. Alien-nation: Latina/o Im/migration in Comparative Perspective (AMST 1903B).

Interested students must register for AMST 1903B.

HIST 1960C. End of the West: The Closing of the U.S. Western Frontier in Images and Narrative (AMST 1904D).

Interested students must register for AMST 1904D.

HIST 1960D. Africa Since 1950 (AFRI 1060A).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1060A.

HIST 1960E. Word and Utopia: Seventeenth-century Portuguese World (POBS 1600S).

Interested students must register for POBS 1600S.

HIST 1960F. The Portuguese Colonial Empire in a Comparative Perspective (XIX-XX Centuries) (POBS 1600Y).

Interested students must register for POBS 1600Y.

HIST 1960G. Southern African Frontiers, c. 1400-1860.

This seminar explores southern Africa before 1860 to explore a global phenomenon: the pernicious emergence of race as the salient marker of human difference. We examine successive frontiers over millennia to track the changing dynamic between indigenes and newcomers. Discussions unpack overarching trends in the ways people negotiated cultural, political and economic difference. Both violence and absorption were always in play, but by the mid-nineteenth century, fluidity and hybridity gave way to assimilation to European norms. In these borderlands at the end of Africa lies the tragic history of our world: inherited race as an overpowering and rigid determinant of status. P

HIST 1960I. Portuguese Discoveries and Early Modern Globalization (POBS 1600D).

Interested students must register for POBS 1600D.

HIST 1960K. The End of Empires? A Global History of Decolonization (POBS 1600I).

Interested students must register for POBS 1600I.

HIST 1960L. Conflicts, Diasporas and Diversities: Religion in the Early Portuguese Empire (POBS 1600J).

Interested students must register for POBS 1600J.

HIST 1960M. The Birth of the Modern World: A Global History of Empires (POBS 1601A).

Interested students must register for POBS 1601A.

HIST 1960N. South Africa since 1990 (AFRI 1060T).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1060T.

HIST 1960Q. Medicine and Public Health in Africa.

This course explores the major debates in the history of medicine in Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and highlights the coexistence of a variety of healing traditions and medical understandings across the continent. It will focus on the following questions: What are some of the ways Africans practice and understand medicine? How have these practices interacted with other medical systems? What impact did colonialism have on the production of medical knowledge? How were practices and treatments evaluated and deemed effective? By whom and on what grounds? And how have independent African states addressed these critical issues?

HIST 1960R. South Africa Since 1990.

South Africa transformed after 1990, but the past remains powerful. This seminar offers a study of this dynamic and complicated country as well as an exercise in contemporary history. It explores the endurance and erosion of the apartheid legacy and the emergence of new problems. A quarter century isn’t enough for a full body of academic historical work to have developed, so the syllabus features journalism, opinion pieces, social science, and biographies – works that provide the “first draft” of history. In addition to the political history, we will focus on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and HIV-AIDs.

HIST 1960S. North African History: 1800 to Present.

This course focuses on the francophone Maghrib (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) and offers an introduction to major themes in the history of Africa and the Arab world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Students will gain the tools to analyze and historicize the dynamic history of this region. We will examine a range of topics, including the transformations of pre-colonial social, economic and cultural patterns, conquest and resistance, comparative histories of colonialism, nationalism, decolonization and revolution, the consolidation of postcolonial states, regional cooperation, the rise of Islamism and civil conflicts, and the Arab Spring.

HIST 1960Z. Zionists Anti Zionists and Post Zionists: Jewish Controversies in the 20th Century (JUDS 1752).

Interested students must register for JUDS 1752.

HIST 1961B. Cities and Urban Culture in China.

Treats the development of cities and urban culture in China from roughly the sixteenth century (the beginning of a great urban boom) to the present. We will look at the physical layout of cities, city government and social structure, and urban economic life, often from a comparative perspective. The course focuses, however, on the changing culture of city life, tracing the evolution of a vernacular popular culture from the late imperial period, through the rise of Shanghai commercial culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to the diverse regional urban cultures of contemporary China.

HIST 1961C. Knowledge and Power: China's Examination Hell.

For centuries a rigorous series of examinations requiring deep knowledge of the Confucian Classics was the primary tool for the selection of government officials in imperial China. This system has been variously celebrated as a tool of meritocracy and excoriated as the intellectual “straightjacket” that impeded China’s entry into the modern world. This seminar examines the system and the profound impact it had, for better or worse, on Chinese society and government in the early modern period, and the role that its successor “examination hell”—the gaokao or university entrance examination—plays in society today.

HIST 1961D. Heaven Above, Suzhou and Hangzhou Below: Urban Culture in Early Modern China.

The commercial boom of sixteenth and seventeenth century China stimulated the growth of a lively popular culture in the great cities of the southeast—Nanjing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou. These cities became magnets for ambitious scholars, pleasure-loving merchants, courtesans, artists, and writers and sites for the production of some of the great masterpieces of Chinese vernacular fiction, drama, book art, and painting. After some background reading in socioeconomic history, the course focuses on analysis of the literature and art of the period and what it reveals about the short-lived “floating world” of late imperial China. P

HIST 1961E. Medieval Kyoto - Medieval Japan.

In the Western historical lexicon, the term “medieval” often conjures up images of backwardness and stagnation. Japan, however, pulsated with political, economic, and cultural creativity during its middle ages. This course explores topics central to Japan’s medieval revolution: -The emergence of a samurai-led shogunate and the creation of new warrior values ; -The appearance of Zen and popular religious sects ; -The creation of innovative “Zen arts” such as noh drama and the tea ceremony, and; -The destruction of Kyoto and its subsequent resurgence in the sixteenth century as a city shared by aristocrats, merchants, and artisans. P

HIST 1961F. Women in Early Modern China.

“Women in Early Modern China” explores the changes in the roles of women and the definition of gender relations that mark the early modern period (roughly, late fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries) in Chinese history. These changes were crucial to the conceptions of women and their place in society that shaped the modern feminist movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Throughout the course we will be thinking about gender relations as relationships of power: about how power was gendered in political, economic, social, and cultural institutions and spheres; and about how the intersection of gender with class, religious belief, and medicine shaped power relationships. We will also be particularly attentive to women’s participation in these power relationships—that is, the ways in which they could (and did) reinforce, manipulate, exploit, subvert, or resist them.

HIST 1961H. Korea: North and South.

This course offers a systematic investigation of the political, economic, and social histories of Korea, North and South, from the inception of the two governments following liberation from Japanese occupation in 1945 to the present day. Enrollment limited to 20.

HIST 1961I. North Korea: Past, Present, Future.

Typically, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) is portrayed as a rogue nation ruled by the Kim family, autocrats who are either “mad” or “bad” and whose policies have traumatized the country’s citizens, wrecked the economy, and threatened nuclear disaster on South Korea, East Asia, even the USA. This course moves beyond such stereotypes to examine the interconnected political, economic, and cultural transformations of the DPRK from 1945 to the present. Also included are the lived experiences of the Korean people, the plight of refugees, and the question of unification with South Korea.

HIST 1961M. Outside the Mainstream.

When ratifying UN Covenant on Civil Rights in 1979, its representative reported, "The right of any person to enjoy his own culture... is ensured under Japanese law. However, minorities... do not exist in Japan." Nothing could have been further from the truth. Japan is - and has been - home to immigrants, indigenous populations forced to accept Japanese citizenship, outcast communities of Japanese ethnicity, and otherwise ordinary persons who live outside the mainstream as outlaws and prostitutes. This course examines how minority communities came into existence, struggled to maintain distinctive lifestyles in what many view as an extraordinarily homogenous society.

HIST 1961N. Colonization and Ethnicity in East Asian History.

East Asia is among the most culturally and linguistically homogeneous regions of the earth, the result of over two millennia of conquest and colonization. This course explores how the wide diversity of cultures, languages, and ecosystems that once existed across East Asia were transformed into a few dominant cultural groups. We will cover two main topics. One is the process whereby the people now known as the Chinese (or Han) were formed through imperial conquest and cultural mixing. The second focuses on the Ainu people of Northeast Asia and how they were forcibly incorporated into the Japanese nation. This course will teach students to think comparatively about processes of colonialism and ideas of ethnicity. While the colonial practices of Western Europeans have been studied in great depth, those of other civilizations have not received as much attention. P

HIST 1962B. Life During Wartime: Theory and Sources from the Twentieth Century.

This course asks how we are to understand war as everyday experience, and what separates war from, or connects it to, the other great movements of mass social and political disruption that the twentieth century has seen. The first part of the semester will examine different frameworks scholars and thinkers have proposed for understanding war as modern experience (militarization, trauma, collective memory, states of exception, etc.) In the second part we will investigate the uses and limitations of specific types of primary sources, drawn from China's war with Japan. Students will choose their own topics for final projects.

HIST 1962C. State, Religion and the Public Good in Modern China.

In late imperial China, religion formed an intrinsic part of public life, from the cosmological ritual of the state to the constitution of family and communities of various kinds. This arrangement was challenged in the twentieth century by the fall of the dynastic system and the introduction of new definitions of religion, modernity, sovereignty, and secularism. We will explore the ramifications of this change in greater China and its border areas during the past hundred years, looking at how people have sought to create a good public and the public good. Enrollment limited to 20.

HIST 1962D. Japan in the World, from the Age of Empires to 3.11.

This seminar explores the ambitions, anxieties and mutual images that shaped Japan’s relationships with China, Korea, and eventually the West, from the early modern era to the 21st century. We will examine the response to Perry’s arrival in 1853, Japan’s subsequent efforts to join the ranks of the great powers of the day through diplomacy, the pursuit of empire, and military force, and the emergence of radically different ways of being in the world since 1945. Other topics to be covered include the role of race in shaping US-Japan relations, and the legacies of colonialism and war in East Asia.

HIST 1962E. Print and Power in Modern Southeast Asia.

This seminar explores the relationship between print and power in the comparative histories of 20th century colonial era Southeast Asia (focus: Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma). What are the mechanics and manifestations of ‘print?’ How does print communicate and symbolize ‘power’? From governmental paperwork to scriptural authority, mass printed newspapers to writers and publishers, print embodies many forms and functions. We will cover the following topics: print culture and print capitalism, circulations and the publishing economy, colonial archives and mapping, the formation of ‘imagined communities’ and national consciousness, and debates on gender, class, and modernity expressed through popular press and novels.

HIST 1963L. Barbarians, Byzantines, and Berbers: Early Medieval North Africa, AD 300-1050.

This class explores the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages through the lens of western North Africa. Divided internally by theological disputes and inter-communal violence, and subjected to repeated conquests and reconquests from the outside, in this period North Africa witnessed the triumph of Islam over Christianity; the rise and fall of ephemeral kingdoms, empires, and caliphates; the gradual desertion of once-prosperous cities and rural settlements; the rising strength of Berber confederations; and the continuing ability of trade to transcend political boundaries and to link the southern Mediterranean littoral to the outside world. P

HIST 1963M. Charlemagne: Conquest, Empire, and the Making of the Middle Ages.

The age of Charlemagne sits at the nexus of antiquity and the middle ages. For two hundred years Charlemagne’s family, the Carolingians, welded together fragments of splintered Roman imperial tradition and elements from the Germanic world to forge a new, medieval European civilization. This seminar examines that process by exposing students to the primary sources, archaeological evidence, and modern scholarly debates surrounding the Carolingian age. Topics include the Carolingians' rise to power; Charlemagne’s imperial coronation; interactions with the Islamic and Byzantine worlds; the revival of classical learning; the Church; warfare; the economy; Vikings; and collapse of the Carolingian Empire. P

HIST 1963Q. Sex, Power, and God: A Medieval Perspective.

Cross-dressing knights, virgin saints, homophobic priests, and mystics who speak in the language of erotic desire are but some of the medieval people considered in this seminar. This course examines how conceptions of sin, sanctity, and sexuality in the High Middle Ages intersected with structures of power in this period. While the seminar primarily focuses on Christian culture, it also considers Muslim and Jewish experience. Enrollment limited to 20. P

HIST 1964A. Age of Impostors: Fraud, Identification, and the Self in Early Modern Europe.

Alchemists claiming to possess the philosophers' stone; basilisks for sale in the market; Jews pretending to be Catholics; women dressing as men: early modern Europe appeared to be an age of impostors. Officials responded to this perceived threat by hiring experts and creating courts, licenses, passports, and other methods of surveillance in an era before reliable documentation, photography, DNA. And yet one person's fraud was another's self-fashioning. We will examine instances of dissimulation, self-fashioning, and purported fraud, efforts to identify and stem deception, and debates about what was at stake when people and things were not what they seemed. P

HIST 1964B. The Enchanted World: Magic, Angels, and Demons in Early Modern Europe.

European fascination with the unseen world reached its highpoint alongside the Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution,and Enlightenment. Between 1500 and 1800, theologians, natural philosopher, princes, and peasants devoted enormous energy to understanding, communicating with, and eliminating a host of ethereal creatures, including ghosts, angels, demons, vampires, nature spirits, and witches. Some also sought to access the praeternatural powers that these creatures seemed to command. This course explores the intellectual, social, political, and religious origins of the interest in this unseen world, the structures Europeans created to grapple with it, as well as the factors that ultimately led to its demise.

HIST 1964D. Women in Early Modern England.

Selected topics in the social history of early modern England (c.1500-1800), with particular emphasis on the experiences of women. Themes to be addressed will include the family, working life, education, crime, politics, religion, and the early feminists. Not open to freshmen sophomores. P

HIST 1964E. The English Revolution.

Looks at the origins and nature of the English Civil War and Republican experiment in government (1642-1660) through a close examination of primary source materials. Considers not only the constitutional conflict between the crown and parliament, but also the part played by those out-of-doors in the revolutionary upheaval, the rise of popular radicalism, and the impact of events in Scotland and Ireland. P

HIST 1964F. Early Modern Ireland.

This seminar will cover various themes in the political, religious, social and cultural history of Ireland between c. 1500 and the later eighteenth century. Topics to be discussed will include the Reformation, the Irish Rebellion, Cromwell's rule, the War of the Two Kings, popular protest, the beginnings of the Irish nationalism, and the experiences of women. P

HIST 1964G. Spin, Terror and Revolution: England, Scotland and Ireland, 1660-1720.

Examines the revolutionary upheavals in England, Scotland and Ireland of the later 17th-century through a close examination of primary source materials. Topics covered include: high and low politics, the rise of the public sphere, the politics of sexual scandal, government spin, persecution and toleration, and the revolutions of 1688-91 and their aftermaths. Enrollment limited to 20. P

HIST 1964H. Race and Empire in 18th Century France.

Eighteenth-century France is remembered as the epicenter of the Enlightenment, a period in which people across Europe celebrated individual autonomy, rationality, and empathy. It was also a century of rapid expansion of the French trade in enslaved peoples and the solidification of a colonial empire fueled by enslaved labor. This class will explore the development of French thinking about the non-European world as the French sought to justify, criticize, or simply understand the country's rapidly expanding global reach. P

HIST 1964I. England Without a Monarchy: Regicide and Republic, 1649-1660.

This course examines England's mid-seventeenth century revolution, looking at high and low politics, the rise of popular radicalism, and the conflict in the empire. Themes explored include: the trial of Charles I: the commonwealth, 1649-53; the Ranters and the sexual revolution; the Digger commune a Stt. George's Hill; Oliver Cromwell's war crimes in Ireland; Cromwell as Lord protector, 1653-58; the social and gender egalitarianism of the Baptists, Quakers, and Fifth Monarchists; the revolutions in the Caribbean and Atlantic; and the Western Design and capture of Jamaica.

HIST 1964K. Descartes' World.

An exploration of history and historical fiction through the examination of the early life of René Descartes. One of the most famous philosophers of the 17th century, he was French but wrote his works while living in exile in the Dutch Republic. While his ideas are much debated, little is known about his personal life, especially before he settled in the Republic in 1628, despite many hints about his years as a soldier, his extensive travels in Europe, and his possible political and occult associations. This seminar is designed as a collective exploration into the small pieces of evidence about his early life and the lives of his friends and enemies in order to put mind and body back together rather than to treat them separately. P

HIST 1964L. Slavery in the Early Modern World.

There were multiple forms of slavery in the Early Modern world. We will look at three major systems: Mediterranean slavery and the Barbary Corsairs, Black Sea slavery and slave elites of the Ottoman Empire, and the Atlantic triangular trade. We will examine the religious, political, racial, and economic bases for these slave systems, and compare the experiences of individual slaves and slave societies. Topics discussed include gender and sexuality (e.g. the institution of the Harem and the eunuchs who ran it), the connection between piracy and slavery, and the roles of slavery in shaping the Western world. P

HIST 1964S. Islands of the Mind.

Islands command an outsized place in history and imagination. Objects of desire and fear, sites of connection and isolation, they can drive politics and economies, inspire worldviews and fantasy, and impel movements of people. The power of islands has been brought to life in myths about lost isles and in tales about fictional figures like Circe, Sinbad, and Robinson Crusoe. It has also shaped the lives of countless peoples, including premodern Pacific Ocean indigenous navigators, early modern pirates, nuclear refugees in Oceania, and contemporary migrants in the Mediterranean. Using sources ranging from ancient epics and medieval books of islands to colonial maps and contemporary film, this seminar explores the significance that islands have had over the millennia.

HIST 1965A. City as Modernity:Popular Culture, Mass Consumption, Urban Entertainment in Nineteenth-Century Paris.

Modernity as a distinct kind of cultural experience was first articulated in the Paris of the 1850s. The seminar will explore the meaning of this concept by looking at the theories of Walter Benjamin, as well as historical examples of popular urban culture such as the mass circulation newspaper, the department store, the museum, the café concert and the early cinema. Enrollment limited to 20.

HIST 1965B. Fin-de-Siècle Paris and Vienna.

We will examine two great imperial capitals facing similar set of challenges at the end of a century dominated by Europe. Austria-Hungary and France were forced to reckon with declining status as great powers, made manifest by their defeat at the hands of Prussia in 1867/1870 respectively. Both struggled with place of ethnic and religious minorities in modern states, and both responded with outbursts of political anti-Semitism that emerged. We will not only gain a basic factual knowledge of fin-de-siècle urban life but also explore some of the works and problems animating the intellectual life of the twentieth century.

HIST 1965C. Stalinism.

In this course we will examine in detail one of the deadliest and most perplexing phenomena of the twentieth century: Stalinism. During Joseph Stalin’s reign the people of the Soviet Union experienced events of astonishing scale and revolutionary change. Rapid industrialization, massive collectivization, famine, purges, state terror, devastating world war, and foreign occupation brought unprecedented suffering and premature death to tens of millions of Soviet citizens. Given the size of the topic and the limited hours in a semester, this course focuses on Stalin’s rise to power and his reign in the 1930s. Rather than surveying the views of a wide range of scholars, we will delve into two very long works of recent scholarship in depth. This is a reading intensive course.

HIST 1965D. The USSR and the Cold War.

This seminar will examine in detail the Soviet Union's involvement in the Cold War, the defining international conflict between the end of the Second World War and the collapse of communism in Europe. Topics include cultural phenomena, economic organizations, and ideology, in addition to diplomatic crises and the indirect military confrontations in Asian, Africa, and the Americas. Enrollment limited to 20.

HIST 1965E. Politics of the Intellectual in 20C Europe.

This course will concentrate on European thinkers' engagement with the politics of the 20th century. Discussion will cover a range of cultural and intellectual currents and ideologies—modernism, fascism, communism, "dissidence," "internal" migration, "anti-politics"—as well as genres (essays, letters, fiction, criticism, poetry, film).

HIST 1965H. Europe and the Invention of Race.

This upper-level seminar in European intellectual history will examine key texts from the 16th through the 20th century in which the negotiation of difference and diversity produced and questioned the organization of populations into groups and hierarchies called races. How does “race thinking,” with its spectrum from racism to critical race thinking, channel and direct phenomena such as European global expansions, capitalism and slavery, religious difference and secularization, colonialism, imperialism, and fascism.

HIST 1965I. Industrial Revolution in Europe.

Europe’s industrial revolution is often cited among the key drivers of global inequality between “the West and the Rest.” But industrialization unfolded unevenly everywhere, including within Europe itself. Using a local perspective on a global story, this seminar explores how the industrial revolution unfolded differently and unevenly across the diverse communities, regions, and landscapes of Europe during the long 19th century. Major themes include the urban-rural divide; technology and deindustrialization; the culture of work; faith and politics; socialism, populism, and antisemitism.

HIST 1965L. Appetite for Greatness: Cuisine, Power, and the French.

France has long been synonymous with a delicious cuisine, one with no equal in the world. This seminar will examine the development of French cuisine as a tool for national greatness, beginning with its origins under the Sun King, Louis XIV. We will trace subjects such as the global dissemination of French food after the French Revolution, the food shortages common to French people as the country industrialized, and the feeling that France was losing its culinary hold in the twentieth century. Today, French food again serves as a nexus for the anxieties of the nation, including Americanization and immigration.

HIST 1965M. Double Fault! Race and Gender in Modern Sports History.

From 1936 Berlin Olympics to infamous East German swimmers of the Cold War to 1998 French soccer team, sport culture has consistently helped define overall societal values. We will examine how early modern societies defined the ideal sporting participant, and how shifts over time included and excluded various groups. These shifts, including the promotion of masculinity through duels, the fears of women’s emancipation via cycling, and the exclusion of Jews from competition, were based on perceived national needs. Through the study of sports, we will study who we have been as a community—as well as who we aspire to be.

HIST 1965N. "Furies from Hell" to "Femi-Nazis": A History of Modern Anti-Feminism.

Women have faced a deep antipathy at nearly every turn in their struggles for civic and social inclusion. These denials of women’s rights often take the form of commentaries—sometimes vicious ones—about women’s general natures, bodies, and fitness for public life. Women are consistently tagged with various labels of otherness: opponents of women’s rights deem them irrational, unnatural, traitors to society, even sexual deviants. This course will examine the dangers that women allegedly represent to social stability from the Enlightenment to today, as well as how women have fought back to assert their rights and independence.

HIST 1965O. 'Naturally Chic': Fashion, Gender, and National Identity in French History.

From its beginnings, the fashion industry in France has been synonymous with the international reputation of the nation. Similarly, being “chic,” having an innate sense of discernment and style, became synonymous with French femininity. This seminar will explore the interconnectivity of the history of fashion in France, the requirements it placed on French women, and the pressures the fashion industry has borne since the 1700s. We will look at how fashion reflected and created the moods of various periods, and we will also see how French women’s national belonging has been innately tied to ability to display French fashion.

HIST 1965R. The Crisis of Liberalism in Modern History.

Liberalism has flamed out before. Its collapse in the late 19c left a mark on the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, the art of Gustav Klimt, and the fiction of Franz Kafka. Liberalism's second collapse in the 1930s, inspired the founder of neoliberal economics Friedrich Hayek and the philosopher of science Karl Popper. These men were all Austrian, a nationality they shared with the most infamous critic of liberalism, Adolf Hitler. This course wonders why this country in the center of Europe has exercised such an outsized influence on our modern experience.

HIST 1966Q. Colonial Encounters and the Creation of Latin America.

This seminar examines how interactions between Europeans and indigenous peoples shaped the formation of early Latin America. From Florida to Brazil, invasion led to widely varied outcomes, including outright failures. Students will come to see colonization as a difficult, uneven process, as Europeans struggled to comprehend and engage unfamiliar natural and human environments; the new societies that emerged reflected complex transatlantic exchanges. Our readings will consist of primary sources from the sixteenth century, supplemented by academic texts. Students will write a series of three-page response papers, along with a ten to twelve-page essay on major themes from the course. P

HIST 1967C. Making Revolutionary Cuba, 1959-Present.

In January 1959, the forces of rebel leader Fidel Castro entered Havana and forever altered the destiny of their nation and world. We will examine the question of political hegemony and the many silences built into the achievement of Revolution—from race to sexuality to culture—even as we acknowledge that popular support for that Revolution has often been both genuine and heartfelt. It is this counterpoint between the Revolution’s successes in the social, economic, and political spheres and its equally patent exclusions that have shaped Cuba’s history in the past and will continue to guide its path to an uncertain future.

HIST 1967E. In the Shadow of Revolution: Mexico Since 1940.

This course traces political, social, and economic developments in Mexico since the consolidation of the revolutionary regime in the 1930s. The topics addressed include: the post World War II economic “miracle”; the rise of new social movements; the Tlatelolco massacre; the deepening crisis of the PRI (the governing party) in the 1980s and 1990s; the Zapatista rebellion; violence and migration on the northern border; and the war against narcotraficantes.

HIST 1967F. The Maya in the Modern World.

This seminar focuses on the Maya in postcolonial Guatemala. The main theme is the evolving relationship between indigenous peoples and the nation-state. Topics include peasant rebellions in the nineteenth century, the development and redefinition of ethnic identities, the military repression of the 1970s and 1980s, the Rigoberta Menchú controversy, and the Maya diaspora in Mexico and the United States. Enrollment limited to 20.

HIST 1967L. Politics and Culture Under The Brazilian Military Dictatorship, 1964-1985.

This course will focus on the political, social, economic, and cultural changes that took place in Brazil during the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964-85. We will examine why the generals took power, the role of the U.S. government in backing the new regime, cultural transformations during this period, and the process that led to re-democratization.

HIST 1967Q. Gender and Sexuality in the Modern History of Latin America.

This seminar explores how gender shaped the political and social history of 19th and 20th century Latin America. Together, we will explore some themes at the center of this growing body of scholarship, such as the role of honor and sexual morality in shaping post-independence Latin American societies, the efforts of states to regulate the family, and the role of gender in the organization of the modern labor force. Throughout the semester, we will discuss the intersections of race, gender and class that are at the heart of changing conceptions of sexual morality and ideals of modern family organization.

HIST 1967R. History of Rio de Janeiro.

From colonial outpost to capital of the Portuguese Empire, from sleepy port to urban megalopolis, this seminar examines the history of Rio de Janeiro from the sixteenth century to the present. Using an interdisciplinary perspective rooted in historical analyses, we will analyze multiple representations of the city, its people, and geography in relationship to Brazilian history, culture, and society.

HIST 1967T. History of the Andes from the Incas to Evo Morales.

Before the Spanish invaded in the 1530s, western South America was the scene of the largest state the New World had ever known, Tawantinsuyu, the Inca empire. During almost 300 years of colonial rule, the Andean provinces were shared by the "Republic of Spaniards" and the "Republic of Indians" - two separate societies, one dominating and exploiting the other. Today the region remains in many ways colonial, as Quechua- and Aymara-speaking villagers face a Spanish-speaking state, as well as an ever-more-integrated world market, the pressures of neoliberal reform from international banks, and the melting of the Andean glaciers.

HIST 1968A. Approaches to the Middle East.

When and why did the Middle East emerge as a field of study? What are the competing approaches to framing our understanding of this pivotal region? How did these approaches change over time? This upper-level seminar explores these questions within the larger context of colonial, national, and other ongoing encounters that have shaped modern regimes of knowledge production. The class features visits by leading scholars from different disciplines who reflect on the questions they ask and how they go about answering them. Readings range from canonical works to innovative new scholarship. No pre-requisites but previous coursework on this region recommended.

HIST 1968F. History of Capitalism: The Eastern Mediterranean and the World Around.

This course is an analysis of where the Mediterranean region fits in the evolving capitalist world-economy in the aftermath of the so-called Age of Discovery. The context of the Mediterranean is set in our own age’s “globalization” as histories of capitalism push on the “world” in new ways challenging our mental maps for historical change. The seminar takes on a critical approach to the European historiography on the rise of capitalism and the view that the Mediterranean collapsed with the rise of the Baltic and the Atlantic.

HIST 1968M. The Worlds of Crusading.

In the spring of 1096, more than 40,000 men and women left their homes on an armed pilgrimage from Europe toward Jerusalem. This was the first of many crusading movements, eventually leading to the establishment of crusader states along the Eastern Mediterranean. While these states only lasted two hundred years, the ideological effects of crusading still linger today. This course examines historical evidence from both Christian and Muslim sources to interrogate the cultural, geopolitical, and social forces which combined to ignite crusading fervor. It also seeks to understand how the complicated memory of crusading continues to haunt Muslim-Christian relations today.

HIST 1968V. America and the Middle East: Histories of Connection and Exchange.

This seminar explores connections and exchanges between the diverse peoples of two constructed regions: the Middle East and North America. The course proceeds chronologically from the global context surrounding Columbus’s 1492 voyage, eventually focusing on US relations with the “Mideast.” But we’ll not stop there. Rather, we’ll read closely for underlying socioeconomic, diplomatic, and cultural processes—including trade, migration, education, and evolving conceptions of race, religion, and citizenship—themes often ignored by conventional histories that dwell on watershed events, personalities, or conflict. Our goal: to recognize how American-Mideast ties are far more complex, rich, and deep-rooted than is generally assumed

HIST 1969A. Israel-Palestine: Lands and Peoples I.

The Holocaust largely destroyed the centuries-long Jewish civilization in Europe. For Zionism, originating in late nineteenth-century antisemitism and East-Central European ethno-territorial nationalism, the “final solution” proved the need for a Jewish-majority state in Palestine. Yet the majority of the population in Eretz Israel was Palestinian. The creation of Israel in 1948 was the outcome of a bitter war with the local Arab population and the surrounding states, in the course of which most of the Palestinians were expelled or fled, facilitating the establishment of a Jewish-majority state. The seminar will discuss the fraught question of the two traumatic events of the Holocaust and the Nakba (the expulsion of 1948), and propose that we can both better understand these events, and begin the long path to reconciliation, by applying the tools of empathetic first-person history.

HIST 1969B. Israel-Palestine: Lands and Peoples II.

This advanced undergraduate seminar seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the links between the region now known as Israel and Palestine and the peoples that have inhabited it or have made it into part of their mental, mythical. and religious landscape throughout history. The course will be interdisciplinary at its very core, engaging the perspectives of historians, geologists, geographers, sociologists, scholars of religion and the arts, politics and media. At the very heart of the seminar is the question: What makes for the bond between groups and place - real or imagined, tangible or ephemeral. No prerequisites required.

HIST 1969C. Debates in Middle Eastern History.

This seminar investigates the historical bases of some of the major debates which continue to dominate contemporary discussions on the Middle East. These include debates on colonialism and its legacies; problems associated with the post-colonial Middle Eastern state (the "democracy deficit": human rights; oil; political Islam); and arguments about the causes and consequences of some of the major events in Middle Eastern history (the Israel-Palestinian conflict; the Iranian revolution; the Lebanese civil war; 9/11 and the Iraq invasion; and the Arab Spring). Priority will be given to seniors, and history and MES concentrators. Previous introductory coursework in ME history is highly recommended (Hist 0244 or equivalent) for all students wishing to enroll in this course.

HIST 1969D. Palestine versus the Palestinians.

This course explores alternatives to the common view that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a struggle between two nationalist movements over the same land. Moving away from state-centric political discourse, it engages the questions of imperialism, settler-colonialism, and displacement from a bottom-up perspective of everyday life of Palestinian communities in historic Palestine and the Diaspora. How do these internally divided and spatially fragmented communities negotiate the present and imagine the future? Ultimately, the course asks: What does it mean to be a Palestinian? And what can the Palestinian condition teach us about the modern world?

HIST 1969F. Nothing Pleases Me: Understanding Modern Middle Eastern History Through Literature.

This seminar examines the major themes and events in the history of the Middle East in the 20th century through a close reading of literary texts and, in some cases, films. Throughout the course we will try to locate the perspectives of the “ordinary people” of the region, and will pay special attention to the voices of those who are rarely heard from in discourses on the Middle East: religious minorities, sexual minorities, women, children, but also criminals, misfits, misanthropes and others who have been deemed social outcasts.

HIST 1970A. Colonial Encounters: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of Early America.

This seminar explores Native American histories and cultures in North America, primarily through the multiple and overlapping points of contact and coexistence with Europeans from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Although we will be reading widely in the very interesting recent literature in the field, a major component of the class is to investigate in a practical way the problem of sources for understanding and writing about American Indian history. As a senior capstone seminar, the final project is a substantial research paper. Enrollment limited to 20. P

HIST 1970B. Enslaved! Indians and Africans in an Unfree Atlantic World.

This course examines the varieties of Indian and African enslavement in the Atlantic world, including North America, up through 1800. Reading widely in recent literature in the field as well as in primary sources from the colonial period, we will ponder the origins, practices, meanings, and varieties of enslavement, along with critiques and points of resistance by enslaved peoples and Europeans. Special emphasis will be given to the lived nature of enslavement, and the activity of Indians and Africans to navigate and resist these harsh realities. A final project or paper is required, but there are no prerequisites. P

HIST 1970D. Problem of Class in Early America.

This seminar considers economic inequality in colonial British North America and the new United States. Studying everyone from sailors, servants, and slaves in the seventeenth century to industrial capitalists and slaveholders in the nineteenth century, this course will look at the changing material structures of economic inequality and the shifting arguments that legitimated or challenged that inequality. Readings will explore how historians have approached the subject of inequality using on class as a mode of analysis. Students will write extended papers that place primary research in conversation with relevant historiography. Enrollment limited to: 20. Written permission required.

HIST 1970F. Early American Money.

The history of finance has become a crucial site for studying governance and statecraft, for recovering the organizing logic of capitalism, and for recognizing the structures of power in any given society. Topics include the recurring debates over metallic and paper currencies, the emergence of a national banking system, and the technologies of coinage, assaying, and counterfeiting. Particular focus on the relationship of finance and slavery, as well as the many “bank wars” that riled American politics from the seventeenth century through the nineteenth century.

HIST 1970G. Captive Voices: Atlantic Slavery in the Digital Age.

The digital revolution is transforming the study of history. But is it allowing us to better recover the voices and lived experiences of people in the past? This course considers the possibilities and pitfalls of using digital tools to understand the lives of enslaved men and women in the Americas between 1500 and 1800. Each session considers a different digital humanities project, supplemented by primary sources and recent books. For their final project, students will contribute to the Database of Indigenous Slavery in the Americas, which is hosted here at Brown. There are no prerequisites for this course. P

HIST 1970H. Early American Science, Medicine, and Ways of Knowing.

This capstone seminar explores science, medicine, and ways of knowing in early America. Science and medicine in American history have largely been approached as a modern history, focusing on a few famous figures of European descent. Nineteenth and twentieth-century scientists and physicians such as Thomas Edison and Jonah Salk have embodied American values of entrepreneurship and innovation. This course argues that American science and medicine have a longer history that begins with its first colonies. Starting with English science in the era of Jamestown and Plymouth Colony and Indigenous epistemologies of the body and environment and ending in the era of America’s founding, this course traces key ways of knowing while also centering important historical themes such as imperialism, slavery, and appropriation.

HIST 1971D. From Emancipation to Obama.

This course develops a deep reading knowledge of significant issues and themes that define African American experiences in the 20th century, experiences that begin with the years following Emancipation and culminates with the election of President Obama. Themes include citizenship, gender, labor, politics, and culture. The goal is to develop critical analysis and historiographical depth. Some background in twentieth century United States history is preferred but not required. Assignments include weekly reading responses, class participation and presentation, and two written papers. Enrollment limited to 20.

HIST 1972A. American Legal History, 1760-1920.

Upper-level undergraduate seminar examining the history of issues that have been contested in recent U.S. legal decisions and practices. The main period covered is 1780-1920, but we will also consider the use and misuse of the history of this period in legal decisions and debates of the past two decades. Among the topics covered are Native American sovereignty; firearms use and regulation; slavery, servitude, and emancipation; women’s rights and reproductive freedom; and the meaning of citizenship. Enrollment limited. To be considered for admission, students must contact the instructor before the beginning of the semester. Instructor permission required.

HIST 1972E. Theory and Practice of Local History.

Examines the theory and practice of local history, evaluating examples from a variety of genres ranging through micro history to folk music, from genealogy to journalism. Work with primary documents, evidence from the built environment and visits to local historic sites and archives will enable students to evaluate sources and develop their own ideas about writing history and presenting it to a public audience. Enrollment limited to 20. Instructor permission required.

HIST 1972F. Consent: Race, Sex, and the Law.

In the context of recent student organizing on college campuses, the word “consent” has become headline news. But what is “consent” and what does it have to do with the history of race and sexuality in America? In this course, we will use history, law, and feminist theory to understand the origins of consent, to trace its operation as a political category, and to uncover the many cultural meanings of “yes” and “no” across time. Themes addressed include: slavery, marriage, sex work, feminism, and violence, from the founding of American democracy to the present.

HIST 1972G. Lesbian Memoir.

This capstone seminar explores the genre of lesbian memoir through lenses both historical and theoretical. We will think together whether memoir constitutes a primary source for historical study, and its place in lesbian history. We will consider feminist theoretical questions posed by this genre of writing: What (or who, or when) is a lesbian? Is the category of the lesbian rooted in gender essentialism or disruption? How (or when, or if) did the category of lesbian become marked as white?

HIST 1972H. U.S. Human Rights in a Global Age.

Examines how the U.S. has shaped or been shaped by global human rights struggles. Topics include: indigenous rights in the U.S. Early Republic; Antislavery in the early Atlantic World; anti-imperialism in U.S. wars with Mexico and Spain; U.S. and human rights conventions; the Cold War and Civil Rights; and recent U.S. policies concerning human migration. No prerequisites. Priority given to seniors and juniors and those who have not taken the related course HIST 1972A (though students may take both courses). Instructor permission required (email professor before end of registration period).

HIST 1972I. Loss, Political Activism and Public Feelings: Between Fact and Affect.

Why do political actors deploy quantitative approaches when dealing with catastrophe, while personal experiences of grief draw heavily on affective resources? Juxtaposing texts from public health, public policy, empirical political science, and law, alongside cultural and artistic responses that focus on public feelings of mourning, rage, and defiance, this co-taught course examines political action between fact and affect. Case studies will include the long afterlife of transatlantic slavery, anti-lynching campaigns, the enshrining of the Civil War and Civil Rights Movement in national memory, and political movements such as ACT UP and the Movement for Black Lives.

HIST 1972J. Racial Capitalism and U.S. Liberal Empire.

This seminar will reflect on terms that seem to trip us up: empire, capitalism, modernity. Many Americans reject the notion that the United States is an empire due to a sense of patriotism and/or an inability to distinguish colonialism from imperialism, let alone recognize settler colonialism. In this course, however, we will examine how U.S. empire and racial capitalism are inseparable and consider how liberal blinders have operated in American popular and academic discourse—and that perhaps “provincializing the United States” might offer some clarity.

HIST 1972K. American Labor and Working Class History.

Will historians remember 2023 as a turning point in the history of the organized labor movement or a momentary deviation from a decades-long decline? Public support for unions is at its highest level in years, even as hundreds of thousands of workers in the United States have gone on strike, halting production in critical industries from film and entertainment to auto manufacturing. In this advanced seminar, we will seek historical context to better understand these recent trends by examining histories of class formation, the evolution of working class politics, the development of American capitalism and the transformation of the global economy. Spanning from the history of colonial America to the 21st century, we explore the changing nature of work, and follow the identity, experience, and political activity of working class people as they evolve over time.

HIST 1973Q. Enviromental Pressures of South Asia.

South Asia is one of the most densely populated geographical regions of the world. The traditional environmentalist view of separating/protecting ‘nature’ from human settlements often leads to conflicts of resources/land use here. This course studies the evolution of environmental governance in the diverse ecologies of South Asia across four substantive and methodological parts. Part I involves readings on environmental and agrarian systems in the Mughal Empire from the precolonial period (1526-1757) in South Asia. Part II involves readings on forestry laws from the British colonial period (1757-1947) in South Asia. Part III involves reviewing a series of books and films on environmental history in Asia. Part IV involves researching case studies focusing on local environment cultures from the postcolonial period (1947 to present) in South Asia. The course requires writing a final research paper based on a case study.

HIST 1974A. The Silk Roads, Past and Present.

The Silk Road has historically been the crossroad of Eurasia; since the third-century BCE it has linked the societies of Asia—East, Central, and South—and Europe and the Middle East. The exchange of goods, ideas, and peoples that the Silk Road facilitated has significantly shaped the polities, economies, belief systems, and cultures of many modern nations: China, Russia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and India. This course explores the long history (and the mythologies or imaginations) of the Silk Road in order to understand how the long and complex pasts of the regions it touches are important in the age of globalization. P

HIST 1974B. War and Peace: A Global History.

A seminar examining how the categories of “war” and “peace” have emerged over time and place. How does a society decide that a war exists or has ended, or that there is peace, or that peace has been violated? How has the practice of war and the practice of peace changed over the course of history? We approach these questions by looking at a series of case studies, from Greek-Persian relations of the fifth century BCE to the Mongol imperial system of the thirteenth century to the twentieth-century World Wars and recent efforts (successful and failed) at global governance.

HIST 1974D. River Histories: Fishes, Floods and the Transformation of Freshwater Ecosystems.

As food sources and transportation routes, rivers have long played important roles in human societies, and people have in turn transformed them. While many histories explore the lives of people living along rivers, this course will move from the terrestrial realm into the aquatic realm to consider how fluvial ecosystems work, from the smallest microorganisms to large creatures like salmon and alligators. This will allow us to think about how rivers have changed over time as people blocked them with dams, built levees to stop them from flooding, or straightened them into shipping canals. The best documented members of fluvial ecosystems have usually been fish, so we will pay particular attention to histories of fishing. We will also discuss transportation, water power, flood mitigation, and fights between farmers, fishers, and industrialists over how rivers have been exploited.

HIST 1974E. The Intellectual History of Imperialism.

What is an empire? What does an empire do? What is the difference between imperialism and colonialism? How have historical actors as well as historians between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries answered these questions? This seminar considers the long history of intellectual debate over imperialism and its relationship with state formation, capitalism, labor, subjecthood, and the environment. We will read proponents of imperial expansion, advocates of imperial reform, and fierce critics of imperialism. Readings will include canonical texts authored by major historical figures such as John Locke and Vladimir Lenin as well as pamphlets and legislative debates that document the everyday practice of imperialism. In engaging with such primary sources, we will consider how rival visions of imperialism shaped ideological traditions as diverse as liberalism, fascism, conservatism, and communism.

HIST 1974G. Nonviolence in History and Practice.

This advanced history seminar will begin with exploring sources of Mahatma Gandhi’s conception of nonviolent civil disobedience and go on to explore the transformation of those ideas in different contexts of protest and resistance in different parts of colonial India, as well as the US and South Africa. In addition to thinking historically, we will look at the details of strategies and practices that have been developed over the last half century, into the present.

HIST 1974J. Decolonizing Minds: A People's History of the World.

This seminar is an experiment in thinking a global history of the making of the modern world. We read texts that track the movement of 
ideas, peoples and goods, the formation of political and economic inequalities and the continuous struggles of ordinary people against them. From empires to nation-states, from anti-imperialist nationalist struggles to transnational radical movements, this seminar grapples with the politics of knowledge for drawing out “fugitive” lineages of the past that we need to shape our collective future. No overrides will be given before the semester begins. Interested students must attend first class meeting.

HIST 1974K. Maps and Empires.

The human fascination with maps is perennial, but it has been transformed in recent decades from a field for antiquarian map-lovers to a bona fide domain of intellectual inquiry. Maps are now understood as instruments of power and domination rather than value-free representations of territory. Using the world-renowned cartographic collection of the John Carter Brown Library, this seminar will examine the role of maps and other graphic representations of space in the consolidation and contestation of imperial dominions, introducing students to the idea of using maps as primary source materials for historical and cultural analysis. Winter session. P

HIST 1974L. A Global Idea: Civilization(s).

This seminar explores a global history perspective to the idea of civilization since the eighteenth century. Starting from the view that the Enlightenment was a specifically European phenomenon, a foundational premise of Western modernity, we explore how the master narrative around ‘civilization’ developed and crystallized through universal history and world history into today’s global history. Analyzing the making of this global idea includes topics like the politics of knowledge production, and transnational exchanges of ideas and practices of progress, nationalism, periodization, and intertextuality in the West, Ottoman Empire and others.

HIST 1974M. Early Modern Globalization.

What can the experience of a minority group like the Jews teach us about roots of globalization? What were the economic, political, and cultural conditions that allowed early modern Jewish merchants to create economic networks stretching from India to the New World? We will answer these questions by examining the connections and interactions between four major Jewish centers: Ottoman Jewry in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Port Jews of Amsterdam and London, Polish-Jewish estate managers in Ukraine, and the Court Jews of central Europe. We will see how European expansion exploited - and was exploited by - these Jewish entrepreneurs. P

HIST 1974P. Modernity's Crisis: Jewish History from the French Revolution to the Election of Donald Trump.

As the modern world developed and grew, the question of the Jews’ place within it became increasingly important for the majority societies and the Jews themselves to deal with. The solutions found have ranged from inclusion on equal terms through exclusion not only from society but from humanity altogether. In many ways, the debates around this issue have touched on the very meaning of modernity itself. In this advanced undergraduate seminar, we will examine the ongoing polemics on the place of the Jews from the perspectives of both the proponents of the different solutions and the Jews themselves.

HIST 1974S. The Nuclear Age.

This is a course for students interested in questions about the development of atomic weapons, their use on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cold War arms race that followed, and debates over the risks associated with other nuclear technologies. We will look carefully at the scientific and military imperatives behind the Manhattan Project, the decisions that led to the use of atomic weapons on Japan, and subsequent efforts to reflect on the consequences of those choices. We will also explore how popular protest and popular culture after 1945 shaped our understanding of the terrors and promise of the nuclear age.

HIST 1974Y. Moral Panic and Politics of Fear.

What are the political uses and content of fear? This course traces the politics of panic as a window onto state, stigma, and society by pairing foundational readings in culture studies with historical monographs grounded in case studies. Over the course of the semester, we will consider such themes as: the mobilization of fear as a strategy of governance; sexuality, sickness, and disgust; the political logic of backlash; racial terror and colonialism; paranoia and conspiracy theories; popular culture and elite repression and appropriation; and the supernatural inflection of fear politics.

HIST 1975J. Portuguese Discoveries and Early Modern Global History.

This seminar introduces students to the study of Portugal and its connections to Africa, Asia and the Americas between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Rather than offering a chronological or geographic overview of the topic, we will consider the shifting meanings of "discovery" as understood by early modern individuals and historians since, and how expressions of "discovery" have reflected tensions and struggles around empire, race, gender, and other social categories of difference.

HIST 1976A. Native Histories in Latin America and North America.

From Alaska to Argentina, Native people have diverse histories. Spain, Portugal, England and France established different colonial societies; indigenous Latin Americans today have a different historical legacy than Native Americans in the United States. But the experiences of conquest, resistance and adaptation also tell a single overarching story. In colonial times, Native Americans and Europeans struggled over and shared the land. After Independence, however, the new American republics tried to destroy American Indians through war and assimilation. But in the last century Native peoples (both North and South) reasserted their identities within modern states: the "vanishing Indian" refused to vanish.

HIST 1976B. The History of Extinction.

This seminar explores the history of animals and people that are no more or whose existence is threatened. To come to terms with these histories, we will study classification of species and cultures, frontiers of exploitation and appropriation, and violence against lives and ways of life. Extinction itself is also an idea: when is it just an evolutionary phenomenon and when is it a historical moment worth marking? We will consider claims about intervention for the good of humans or others. Finally, we will observe forms of mourning. Course requirements include a major independent research project.

HIST 1976C. Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Environmental Histories of Non-Human Actors.

This course explores stories about the past that account for the character and agency of non-human actors. The triad of “animal, vegetable, and mineral” has traditionally been understood as the lower levels of the great chain of being. Here, we approach them as actors in past worlds, who should be included in the histories we write. The discipline of history will never escape the anthropocentrism of its narratives, but we can mitigate its impoverishing effects. In addition to several short written assignments, students will complete a series of steps to produce a research paper.

HIST 1976D. Powering the Past: The History of Energy.

This seminar will explore the role of energy in shaping our past, and uses energy consumption and production as an entry into central questions in environmental history. Beginning with the regimes of wood, water, and muscle in early human history, the course moves on to explore fossil fuels, nuclear power, and alternative energy sources around the world. While attentive to issues of environmental impact, we will also examine the broader implications of energy use for social, economic, and political developments and challenges. Readings are drawn from anthropology, geography, ecology as well as history. This course presumes no previous history courses.

HIST 1976E. The Anthropocene: Climate Change as Social History.

This seminar will explore ramifications of the concept of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene has been proposed as a new human-driven geologic age that began with the increased exploitation of fossil fuels in the late eighteenth century. Its proponents emphasize transformations through anthropogenic climate change, but we will also consider the effects of population growth, pollution, habitat destruction, and extinction. To assess the historical validity of the concept, we will discuss the impact of humans on the environment before 1800, the extent of transformation since 1800, and whether human-environmental interactions can be usefully generalized to our species as a whole.

HIST 1976F. Fueling Change: A Global History of Energy.

The transition from an energy regime based on biomass and animal muscle to another based on fossil fuels is an epochal transformation whose importance is on a par with the Neolithic transition from hunter-gathering to agriculture. For most of their history, human societies relied on the sun’s energy locked up in plants and animals for their livelihood. In the late eighteenth century, some societies began to transcend the limits of the established energy regime. This course examines the implications of the modern energy transition from the old energy regime to a new one based on fossil fuels around the world.

HIST 1976G. Animal Histories.

Participants in this seminar are invited to explore human and non-human relations in the global past. The history of human-animal relations is huge, so rather than attempt a general survey, we situate our discussion around selected topics. We begin with one animal, the wolf, and move through established and less-familiar historical topics, building toward our final question: how does the inclusion of animals enhance the discipline? The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss said, "animals are good to think with." So is history. In this seminar we think through those things together.

HIST 1976H. Environmental History of Latin America 1492-Present.

From the development of sugar as the major slave commodity of the 18th century Caribbean to the “Water Wars” in the Bolivian highlands at the turn of the 21st century, race, labor, and imperialism in Latin America have been shaped in relation to the natural environment. This course explores the role of the environment in the colonial and modern history of Latin America. Together, we will examine how the environment shaped the processes of conquest, displacement, settlement, and trade, as well as how these processes transformed the natural environment throughout the hemisphere.

HIST 1976I. Imperialism and Environmental Change.

Empires conquer and control territory to enrich their ruling elites, often transforming the environments of these regions to make them more productive and profitable. This course will examine how empires have reorganized the landscapes of the regions they conquered from the ancient empires of Rome and China to the modern overseas empires of Europe and Japan and the informal American empire.

HIST 1976J. Earth Histories: From Creation to Countdown.

This course offers a humanistic perspective on global climate change, arguably the most pressing issue facing our species today. At the heart of this issue lies the idea that human beings have been elevated to the level of a geological force, merging geological and historical time and necessitating a critical conversation between the sciences and the humanities. To that end, we will foster a collaborative dialogue about the diverse “temporalities” that inform our thinking about the earth and its history, from creation stories to the modern idea of progress. Students will also curate a group exhibition about earth histories.

HIST 1976N. Topics in the History of Economic Thought.

This reading and writing intensive seminar exposes students to the history of economic thought. Each year it is offered, we make our way through a different set of materials that touch upon a variety of topics, including theories of value, property, markets, labor, and inequality. We will also ask how ideas about the relationship between capitalism and other forms of economic production have changed over time. In the Fall of 2024, we will discuss the deep history of Surveillance Capitalism.

HIST 1976R. Histories of the Future.

This course is for students interested in how ideas about what the future of human societies would look like have developed over time, and in the impact of those ideas on cultural, social and political norms. We will look carefully at examples of early modern prophecy before turning to the more recent emergence of theories of economic and social progress, plans for utopian communities, and markedly less optimistic and often dark visions of where we’re headed. We will also explore the roles capitalism, popular culture, and science have played in shaping the practices and vocabularies associated with imagining the future.

HIST 1976U. Planning the Family.

This course explores 20th-century efforts to address population growth and family planning in a variety of global contexts, ranging from macro-level initiatives to individual practices. For some women, state leaders, and international experts, contraception meant sexual liberation, increased autonomy, and the reduction of economic hardship. But for others, the same biomedical technologies were associated with colonial control and efforts to reduce “undesirable” people. How is it possible for contraception to hold such expansive and contradictory meanings? In order to assess this central question, students will engage with critical theories of gender, race, class, nationalism, and decolonization.

HIST 1977B. Feathery Things: An Avian Introduction to Animal Studies.

This course will provide grounding in the emerging field of critical animal studies by surveying how we know and interact with one diverse and charismatic class of animals: the Aves. Inspiring science, art, and conservation, traded as resources, kept as hunters or pets, and eaten as meat, birds provide an excellent avenue into animal studies. The diverse ways people relate to birds provides an innovative avenue into studies of social science and human existence. In addition to reading and discussion, we also will experience the many forms of birds around us through indoor and outdoor “laboratory” sessions.

HIST 1977I. Gender, Race, and Medicine in the Americas.

This course examines the relationships among sex, gender, race, disease and modern medicine in the Americas. Together, we will explore ways of thinking about disease and public health as topics of historical inquiry, and examine how health politics have been shaped by processes of imperialism, sexuality, and racial inequality. From nineteenth-century obstetrical experiments on enslaved women, to more recent debates over the disease threat posed by Haitians during the HIV/AIDS pandemic, race and sexuality have both shaped the development of medical knowledge and been used to isolate certain groups as threats. Social concerns over women’s bodies and reproductive capacities have also shaped medical research and public health policy across the hemisphere. Through shared readings and guided independent research, this course gives students an opportunity to explore a wide variety of topics related to the history of medicine, race, and gender.

HIST 1977J. War and Medicine since the Renaissance.

Since the Renaissance, warfare has mainly been a mass activity organized by states, with the ability to cause mass harm growing by leaps and bounds. At the same time, states have developed methods to care for their armed forces, and sometimes the civilians entangled in their military operations. This course will deal briefly with the history of warfare, and mainly with the ways in which states, citizens, and interested parties have attempted to ameliorate the bodily effects of warfare, from the Renaissance to the late 20th century.

HIST 1978B. Bearer of Light, Prince of Darkness: The Devil in Premodern Christianity.

Satan. Lucifer. The Prince of this World. The personification of evil in the Abrahamic traditions has gone by many names and titles. To premodern Christians, the devil was not an abstract entity; they felt the real presence of Satan and his demonic army all around them. This course explores the devil as a dynamic concept evolved in accordance with cultural and political priorities. It looks at the relationship between the premodern Christian perceptions of personified evil and the Jewish and Islamic traditions. It will also look at the ways in which misogyny and racism shaped ancient and medieval demonologies. P

HIST 1978C. Women Writers in Early European History.

The Middle Ages and Early Modern periods were periods during which writing was a mode for women’s self-fashioning and expression in western Europe. Women’s devotional practices in particular offered a dynamic space for education, the advancement of both Latin and vernacular literacies, and the production of often highly personal texts speaking of divine matters on the level of everyday life. We will study a diverse set of writings by women in the medieval and early modern periods, and women’s texts will be examined as historical evidence for women’s perspectives. P

HIST 1978D. Contested Histories of Colonial Indochina: Culture, Power, Change.

This seminar explores the history of French colonial Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos) from 1858 to 1945. Challenging Euro-centric narratives of colonialism, we will critically analyze the colonial encounter as complex exchanges, geographically diverse, and socially uneven. Rather than position colonialism as an external agent of change, this seminar dedicates attention to local agency, and social and cultural transformations. Key historical and theoretical debates addressed include the mechanisms of the colonial state, production and legacies of colonial knowledge, construction of modernity and civilization, development of civil societies, transformations of religious communities, and articulations of identities around gender, class, revolution, and nation.

HIST 1978E. Nationalism and the Nation in Modern Europe.

In the twenty-first century, it seems like nationalism might be a thing of the past. Yet the resurgence of far-right populist movements in the West and even distinctly national responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic has demonstrated the resilience of nationalism and the nation. Why is the idea of the nation so enduring? This course explores the development of nationalism and the emergence and consolidation of nation-states in modern Europe. Through case studies, scholarly and popular articles, and short works of theory on nationalism, students will gain an understanding of the origins of nationalism and European nation-states and their historical trajectory until the present day.

HIST 1978O. Enslaved: Indians and Africans in an Unfree Atlantic World.

This course examines the varieties of Indian and African enslavement in the Atlantic world, including North America, up through 1800. Reading widely in the recent literature in the field as well as in primary sources from the colonial period, we will ponder the origins, practices, meanings, and varieties of enslavement, along with critiques and points of resistance by enslaved peoples and Europeans. Special emphasis will be given to the lived nature of enslavement, and the activity of Indians and Africans to navigate and resist these harsh realities. A final project or paper is required. Enrollment limited to 20. P

HIST 1979A. Women's Work: Gender and Capitalism in American History.

This course examines the importance of women and gender to the long economic history of the United States. Whereas the history of American capitalism has often been a primarily male story, this course moves women from the margins of the narrative to the center. It asks how female labor (paid and unpaid), cultural norms around gender and family, and issues of sex and reproduction have fundamentally shaped economic life—not just for women, but for all Americans. Students will gain insight into American women’s history, the history of capitalism, and the intersectional history of gender, sexuality, race, and class.

HIST 1979B. Empire and Everyday Life in Colonial Latin America.

What was it like to live a “regular” life in the American colonies of Spain and Portugal? How did people eat, dress, have fun, start and sustain families, pursue careers, and think about the world and themselves? Drawing upon a range of sources, this course considers how global and local forces intersected in the individual or community in myriad, yet historically contingent, ways. This micro focus provides another way of considering the broad historical forces at work in the colonies, such as religion, gender, politics, race, technology, and geography, from the “inside-out” perspective of individual and communal accounts and stories.

HIST 1979C. Putin, Stalin and "Friends": Understanding Eurasia Today through its History and Personalities.

This course uses the past to understand the present in Russia and its neighboring states. Each week we will use a “friend” (a person drawn from current events) as a window into events past and present. We will read a few contemporary articles about these notables alongside historical works that give us the necessary background to explore key aspects of their story. In the middle of the semester, you will choose an event or theme and execute an independent research project using contemporary and historical sources. Topics explored include gender, political activism, terrorism, immigration and battles to control the past.

HIST 1979D. Ruined History: Visual and Material Culture in South Asia.

What does art, architecture and material culture reveal about South Asia’s history? This course explores the significance of images, objects, architecture and other forms of material and visual culture to South Asian societies as well as their transformation during the 19th and 20th centuries under pressure from British colonial rule. We will consider how shifts in the meanings of architectural sites (like temples), images and material objects under colonial rule animated political and religious conflict in South Asia between 1880 and 1947. Topics include nationalist cartography; Hindu-Muslim violence around temples and mosques; public performance and anti-colonial activism.

HIST 1979E. Wise Latinas: Women, Gender, and Biography in Latinx History.

Last summer the Brown community reflected on Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's autobiography that documents how her experience as a Bronx-raised Puerto Rican and “wise Latina” shaped her illustrious legal career. This course will provide historical context for reading Latinx biographies and locate them within a broader history of women, gender, and sexuality in Latinx histories of the United States. We will examine life histories, oral histories, and biographies. Units will explore the histories of Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, and Central Americans, paying close attention to race and gender and highlighting struggles for social justice.

HIST 1979F. Sex, Gender, Empire.

Despite brutal violence at their core, European empires were imagined as families consisting of European colonials and their “native” subjects. We'll position sex, gender, family at the heart of the imperial enterprise, examining how boundaries of imperial territory were imagined in terms of a shared household. What a family was and who was part of it became a source of imperial debate which intersected with anxieties around racial mixing and sexuality. In turn, diverse formations of imperial families shaped questions of sex and gender in Europe pursuing this global history of inter-cultural relationships that continue to shape our present day.

HIST 1979G. The Unwinding: A History of the 1990s.

This course will carefully consider the history of a recent decade -- the 1990s. We will reflect on grand historical narratives -- the end of the Cold War, the two-term presidency of a centrist Democrat, and the large challenges faced by the United States at home and abroad. But we will also explore less conventional topics, including the effects of new technology, and the ways in which new media and new tactics reshaped a political consensus that had endured for decades. Finally, we will consider the decade's rich cultural expression, including its music, film, literature and journalism.

HIST 1979H. Prostitutes, Mothers, + Midwives: Women in Pre-modern Europe and North America.

Today’s society often contrasts stay-at-home moms with working women. How did women in Europe and North America navigate the domestic and public sphere from the late medieval period to the start of the twentieth century? How did gender affect occupational identity? Were women excluded from the professional class? This seminar investigates gender in the workplace, looks at gender-specific employment, and considers how families functioned. Readings include passages from classical, religious, and medical texts as an introduction to medieval gender roles. Students will explore texts, images, and film to understand pre-modern work and the women who did it.

HIST 1979I. Race and Inequality in Metropolitan America from Urbanization to #blacklivesmatter.

There is nothing natural about the state of race and inequality in American cities today. Urban inequities – around residential segregation; access to housing, schools, jobs; state violence – are overwhelmingly the result of decades of choices made by individuals and policymakers. This course will examine this history. We will trace how race has shaped metropolitan America from the late nineteenth century to present day. The course will explore how institutions, government policies, and individual practices developed and perpetuated race and class-based inequalities. We will also examine examples throughout this history of individuals who fought collectively for racial and economic justice.

HIST 1979J. London: 1750 to the Present.

This course explores London’s emergence as a major European capital in the eighteenth century, its international pre-eminence in the nineteenth, its experiences of war in the twentieth century and its encounters with immigration, social change and urban discontent in the postwar period. We will focus on themes in the social and cultural life of London, including popular culture, poverty, urban space, crime, and street life. We will discuss how scholars have approached these histories and use contemporary sources—visual and material culture, court records, newspaper accounts, and literature—to explore the lives of Londoners of the past.

HIST 1979K. The Indian Ocean World.

Oceans cover two-thirds of the surface of the earth. They are the world’s great connectors. Rather than political boundaries of empire and nation-state, this course focuses on an enduring geography of water as the central shaper of history. Drawing together the history of three continents this course explores the Indian Ocean world as a major arena of political, economic and cultural contact during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As we map the contours of this history we study how race, gender and sexuality were shaped across the Indian Ocean. Major topics include Islam, imperialism, indentured labor migration, liberalism and anti-colonialism. HISTGlobal

HIST 1979L. Urban History of Latin America.

Latin America is the world’s most urbanized region. 80 percent of Latin Americans live in cities, and iconic cities such as São Paulo and Mexico City are among the world's largest conurbations. The city has long played a key role in the region's history, serving as nodes of imperial power, as religious centers, and as markets from pre-Columbian to colonial times. The 20th century witnessed both the achievement and failure of modernization, as cities industrialized rapidly but grew haphazardly, struggling with poverty and pollution. Today, Latin American cities are multifaceted spaces where both real advancement and daunting problems coexist.

HIST 1979M. Piracy, Patents and Intellectual Property.

Intellectual ownership is one of the most intractable problems in contemporary social and economic life. This course explores the emergence and significance of intellectual ownership in the domains of art, architecture, literature, scientific innovation, media, and law. We are particularly interested in the different social, geographic and national contexts in which regimes of intellectual ownership surfaced, and how different national agencies, individuals, and corporate formations variously construct and enforce understandings of ownership and infringement. We will also canvass contemporary enforcement and implementation mechanisms, global north versus global south wealth disparities, and the fate of intellectual property in the digital world.

HIST 1979N. American Charters.

This seminar will read deeply in thirteen seminal texts from American history. Exploring the context in which each document was written, the intentions of the author(s), the medium of publication, the way audiences experienced the document, and its reception throughout history, arguing that charter documents have assumed high importance in the United States, a nation with little precedent to build upon. From John Winthrop's "City Upon a Hill" speech, which may never have been given, to Second Inaugural of Barack Obama, we'll consider the ways in which ambitious writers/speakers have tried to claim authorship for the narrative of American history.

HIST 1979O. Comparative Black Power.

Fifty years ago, in 1966, Stokley Carmichael made his legendary call for “Black Power!” That call was global, marked by its diversity. How did the idea of Black Power travel? Why did it emerge when and where it did, and what were its meanings in different contexts? This course examines the manifestations of black power movements in the Caribbean and in Africa, in the United States and in India. With the 50th anniversary in mind, this course will critically explore the dreams, international dimensions, gender politics, and legacies of Black Power.

HIST 1979P. History of Chinese Medicine.

In the past several decades consumer discontent with Western medicine has prompted an unprecedented interest in other methods of healing. As the longest continuous literate tradition on the planet Chinese culture has enduring experience in healthcare provision, making it an attractive alternative to biomedicine. In this course we survey the depth and complexity of the Chinese medical tradition through the lens of indigenous techniques and their permutations in diverse locales. Proceeding from the earliest written records on oracle bones to present day ethnographies of clinical practice, we will complement close readings of canonical texts with a focus on lived experience.

HIST 1979Q. Japanese Film and Animation of the 20th Century.

Recent years have seen an explosion of worldwide interest in Japanese popular media, including manga (comics), anime (animation), and films. Yet Japan’s current success in exporting films/anime abroad is by no means just a recent phenomenon. We will explore Japanese live action film/animation from its origins through turn of 21st century. Students will learn to read films as narrative texts, and critiquing them on multiple levels. In the process, we will attempt to seek out what about Japanese cinematic art has caught the attention of Western critics, keeping our eyes on questions of identity and responses to historical events.

HIST 1979R. Scientific Controversies from Creationism to Climate Change.

This course examines scientific controversies from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Topics will include evolution, telepathy, eugenics, lobotomy, recovered memories, vaccination, cloning, and global warming. We will study what these controversies tell us about the shifting relationship between science and society, how changes in scientific paradigms occur, why some controversies resolve, and why others persist, even in the face of long-standing scientific consensus. Students will learn to see science not as a progressive series of discoveries in the eternal pursuit of truth, but as an often messy historical process fully embedded in the politics and culture of its time.

HIST 1979S. History of Life Itself: Biopolitics in Modern Europe.

Life has long existed, but also has a history of its own. With the development of the natural sciences and state governance of its own populations, human life can be said to have entered into history. Homo Sapiens became the subject of medical science, political philosophy, and state law. In looking at the intersecting histories of science, politics, and theories of life, this seminar will examine the origins and effects of political economy, biology, public health, racism, eugenics, state violence, and ultimately democracy. We will read meta-histories from theorists, case studies from historians, and classic works of political philosophy.

HIST 1979T. Modernism and Its Critics.

This course explores how European writers interpreted modern art and manners between 1850 and 1940. As a crucial figure in emerging modern world, the cultural critic aimed to explain the meaning of style for society. Consequently, cultural critics created rich primary resources for understanding politics, beliefs, and everyday life activities. We will especially focus on anxiety about modern life expressed in controversies over avant garde movements from impressionists to expressionists, realists to the surrealists. We will cover issues like hysteria, men’s fashion, music, vacations, sexuality, and advertising. In addition to lesser known figures, selected readings include Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Kafka.

HIST 1979U. The Business of Empire: History of Capitalism and U.S. Foreign Relations, 1900 to the Present.

This course explores the intersections between American business and American Empire during the twentieth century. From the United Fruit Company in Latin America to the arms manufacturers at Lockheed Martin, the interests of capital have shaped U.S. foreign relations. As students race this history across the twentieth century, they will learn how the rise of American business to global preeminence depended upon a supportive, interventionist government. This course will appeal to history, IR, and Economics concentrators among others.

HIST 1979V. Technologies of the Soul: The History of Healing.

Movements that sought to heal society formed a distinct counterpoint to establishment science, religion and culture throughout modernity. In this course, we will examine distinctly modern, non-medical forms of healing from the late 18th until the mid twentieth centuries. This course engages cultural history and theory, science, opera and religion asking whether movements such as Mesmerism, Wagnerism, or Anthroposophy formed a hopeful expansion of the healing role of science art and religion? Or did such developments subvert established norms that provoked anxiety? Ultimately we will probe the limits of the humanities while exploring movements that have challenged such boundaries.

HIST 1979W. Debates on the Holocaust.

Few topics in Modern European History have so heavily engaged historians while producing so little consensus as the Holocaust. Several debates have emerged in scholarship around several major issues such as motivation, collaboration, ideology, as well as larger questions around genocide itself. In this course, we will examine each debate and the links to specific methods within history such as periodization, causality and disciplinary boundaries. This course presents a unique entry to gain exposure to foundational historical categories and methods. Students will gain a knowledge of concepts critical to historical debate and foundation in a variety of approaches to history.

HIST 1979X. Modern Enchantments: Science, Religion, and Magic in Modernizinig America.

Scholars have long equated modernity with “disenchantment,” the subordination of magic and mysticism to the forces of science and secularization. Recent scholarship, however, has challenged this view, suggesting that the persistence of magical worldviews has been integral to the development of modernity itself. In this course, we will explore the various interactions, both conflicting and complementary, between science, religion, and magic in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States. Topics will include spiritualism, hypnosis, phrenology, optical illusions, alternative medicines, stage magic, and the early psychology of religion. Throughout, we will interrogate the concept of modernity and the narrative of disenchantment.

HIST 1979Y. Peace, Justice and Human Rights in a Global Age.

This course explores the history of the major themes, problems and ideals of global peace, justice and human rights. We investigate the theoretical, social and political elements within these ideals and practices, spanning broad temporal and spatial genealogies of human thought. From biopolitics to geopolitics, we uncover attempts to demand food security, health care, and dignity as universal human rights. We highlight philosophies of peace and ethics, and unpack competing conceptions of “justice.” Among other topics, the political economy of global survival plays an important role in this perspective, especially within bioethics and environmental justice.

HIST 1979Z. The World in Revolution: America and the Global South during the Long 1970s.

We'll explore varied relationships between Americans and Global South during the long 1970s—from the wave of revolutionary movements of the late 1960s to the Reagan “offensive” of 1981. As we trace these relationships across the decade, students will learn how Americans from all walks of life encountered the revolutionary “Third World.” While many on the American Left—from Black Nationalists to feminists such as Bella Abzug—sought cooperation with the revolutionary movements in the Global South, others became determined to reassert U.S. hegemony abroad following the Vietnam War. We will try to understand why this latter group’s antagonistic attitude towards the Global South ultimately came to define U.S. foreign policy.

HIST 1980B. Animals and Plants in Chinese History (ENVS 1916).

Interested students must register for ENVS 1916.

HIST 1980C. Histories of Global Wetlands (ENVS 1915).

Interested students must register for ENVS 1915.

HIST 1980H. Heresy Orthod. Isl (RELS1530B).

Interested students must register for RELS 1530B.

HIST 1980I. Portuguese Discoveries and Early Modern Globalization (POBS 1600D).

Interested students must register for POBS 1600D.

HIST 1980P. Museum Histories (AMST 1903I).

Interested students must register for AMST 1903I.

HIST 1980R. Urban Schools in Historical Perspective (EDUC 1620).

Interested students must register for EDUC 1620.

HIST 1980T. Modernity, Jews, and Urban Identities in Central Europe (JUDS 1718).

Interested students must register for JUDS 1718.

HIST 1980U. Popular Culture, 1400-1800 (ITAL 1430).

Interested students must register ITAL 1430.

HIST 1980Y. Jews and Revolutions (JUDS 1701).

Interested students must register for JUDS 1701.

HIST 1981B. Birding Communities (ENVS 1557).

Interested students must register for ENVS 1557.

HIST 1981D. Jewish Humor and Commercial Entertainment in Early 20th-Century Europe and America (JUDS 1726).

Interested students must register for JUDS 1726.

HIST 1981F. The Anthropocene: The Past and Present of Environmental Change (ENVS 1910).

Interested students must register for ENVS 1910.

HIST 1981G. Intellectual Change: From Ottoman Modernization to the Turkish Republic (MES 1300).

Interested students must register for MES 1300.

HIST 1981H. Blacks + Jews in American History and Culture (JUDS 1753).

Interested students must register for JUDS 1753.

HIST 1981J. England without a Monarchy: Regicide and Republic, 1649-1660 (HMAN 1974Q).

Interested students must register for HMAN 1974Q.

HIST 1981K. Planning the Family: Gender, Reproduction, and the Politics of Choice (HMAN 1975G).

Interested students must register for HMAN 1975G.

HIST 1981M. A Classical Islamic Education (COLT 1310E).

Interested students must register for COLT 1310E.

HIST 1981N. Death in the West (CLAS 1420).

Interested students must register for CLAS 1420.

HIST 1981P. The Arab Renaissance (COLT 1310J).

Interested students must register for COLT 1310J.

HIST 1981Q. Early Modern Global History at the John Carter Brown Library: A Research Workshop (POBS 1601K).

Interested students must register for POBS 1601K.

HIST 1981R. Transpacific Asian American Studies (ETHN 1750D).

Interested students must register for ETHN 1750D.

HIST 1981S. African American Women's History (AFRI 1170).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1170.

HIST 1981Y. Memory and Justice in East Asia (EAST 1936).

Interested students must register for EAST 1936.

HIST 1982A. Narrating the Anthropocene (ENVS 1911).

Interested students must register for ENVS 1911.

HIST 1990. Undergraduate Reading Courses.

Guided reading on selected topics. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.

HIST 1992. History Honors Workshop for Prospective Thesis Writers.

Prospective honors students are encouraged to enroll in HIST 1992 during semesters 5 or 6. HIST 1992 offers a consideration of historical methodology and techniques of writing and research with the goal of preparing to write a senior thesis in history. The course helps students refine research skills, define a project, and prepare a thesis prospectus, which is required for admission to honors. Students who complete honors may count HIST 1992 as a concentration requirement. Limited to juniors who qualify for the honors program.

HIST 1993. History Honors Workshop for Thesis Writers, Part I.

All students admitted to the History Honors Program must enroll in HIST 1993 for two semesters of thesis research and writing. They may enroll in the course during semesters 6 and 7, or 7 and 8. Course work entails researching, organizing, writing a history honors thesis. Presentation of work and critique of peers' work required. Limited to seniors and juniors who have been admitted to History Honors Program. HIST 1993 is a mandatory S/NC course. See History Concentration Honors Requirements.

HIST 1994. History Honors Workshop for Thesis Writers, Part II.

This is the second half of a year-long course, upon completion the grade will revert to HIST 1993. Prerequisite: HIST 1993.

HIST 2050. Proseminar in Late Medieval History.

Macrohistory/Microhistory. A comparison of two different approaches to the study of the past, especially of late medieval and early modern Europe, focusing on the works of Fernand Braudel and Carlo Ginzburg.

HIST 2080. Seminar in European Social History in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.

Methods of analysis for current topics in social, economic, demographic, family, and gender history. Depending on sources available, papers may be on Italian topics of the 16th-19th centuries, or on French or English topics of the 18th-19th centuries. Language requirement depends on area of specialization.

HIST 2090. Proseminar on European Social History in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.

Selected readings on changes of social life in European cities in the period of transition from the preindustrial to the industrial economy. Primary focus is on developments in France, England, and Italy. Language requirement depends on area of specialization.

HIST 2450. Exchange Scholar Program.

HIST 2890. Preliminary Examination Preparation.

For graduate students who have met the tuition requirement and are paying the registration fee to continue active enrollment while preparing for a preliminary examination.

HIST 2910. Reading and Research.

Section numbers vary by instructor. Please see check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.

HIST 2920. History Now.

Focused on current trends in historical writing and research, with emphasis on presenting a diverse range of cutting-edge work in historical and historiographical context. Required for all first-year PhD students in History.

HIST 2930. The Roots of History.

“The Roots of History” encourages critical thinking about some of the different ways in which historians approach thinking and writing about the past. In particular, we will explore some of the major theoretical stances that have influenced the discipline of history. Our focus throughout will be the interplay between theory and practice. By examining how historians have grappled with questions posed by influential thinkers (often working within other fields of knowledge), we will chart the trajectory of the discipline and assess its working methods. Required for all first-year PhD students in History.

HIST 2935. Historical Crossings.

“Historical crossings” is a rough translation of histoire croisée, referring to global configurations of events and a shared history, rather than to a traditional comparative history. This Seminar is designed to be the cornerstone of the M.A. program. It will not serve as a traditional historical methods course but instead focus on training students to read and think on various scales of historical analysis—from cross-cultural and trans-geographic to the granularity of social and cultural specificity, requiring students to think both globally and locally and introducing them to an advanced level of historical inquiry, debate, and exploration.

HIST 2940. Writing History.

Required of all 3rd semester Ph.D. students.

HIST 2950. The Practice of History.

This graduate seminar is about the professional skills, tools, and careers of historians—from hallmark best practices to new directions. We will engage different kinds of careers historians are pursuing today, the practical skills and resources necessary to meet them, and how historians are deploying those skills in multiple professional arenas, both in and beyond the academy. We shall also discuss some of the prevalent (although often unwritten) social and cultural norms of academia and university life to prepare you to navigate your training, career, and various institutional contexts that accompany and follow completion of a Ph.D. in History

HIST 2960. Prospectus Development Seminar.

This collaborative seminar focuses on identifying and contextualizing a dissertation topic; choosing a dissertation committee and a support network; designing and executing plans for research and writing; and articulating a thesis project as a prospectus, grant proposal, and other oral and written forms. This is a required course for and open only to third-year students in the History Ph.D. program.

HIST 2970A. New Perspectives on Medieval History.

Over the past several decades, the field of medieval history has been reshaped radically. New approaches have changed the ways that medievalists think about old subjects. Our understanding of medieval society itself has expanded as previously marginal or unexplored subjects have become central to medievalists' concern. This seminar explores how the ways in which medieval historians practice their craft have altered in response to these developments. Readings in classic older works are juxtaposed with newer ones on their way to becoming classics themselves.

HIST 2970B. Race, Ethnicity and Identity in the Atlantic World.

Explores question of identity in Atlantic world from sixteenth to nineteenth century, focusing on three types of identity: 1) ethnicity; 2) race; 3) nationality. How are such identities created and maintained? Are they "natural" or "artificial"? How do they change over time, and why? Throughout the seminar, we'll consider both internal/external boundaries, how social actors - particularly subalterns - see themselves and how they are imagined by outsiders. Finally, we will examine how identity is expressed in a wide variety of media - codices, paintings, maps, oral histories, diaries, etc. - and how scholars make use of such sources.

HIST 2970C. Rethinking the Civil Rights Movement.

This graduate course encourages a rethinking of the complex components, arguments and activities that have characterized what we have come to know as the Civil Rights Movement, concentrating primarily on African American agency, actions and politics, through careful reading of recent scholarship in the field. While knowledge of U.S. history is preferred, this course asks larger thematic questions about protest movements (the role of the state, relationships with and between oppressed groups and organizations, and periodization), that will interest non-Americanists also. Some of the topics covered include: gender, organizing and strategies, the local, global ramifications and interactions, organizational structures and politics, and the recent concept of the Long Civil Rights Movement. M

HIST 2970D. Modernity and Everyday Culture - Reading.

No description available.

HIST 2970E. Early Modern Continental Europe - Reading.

This course is designed to introduce graduate students to some major topics and debates in early modern European history, as well as a range of geographical, methodological, and historiographical perspectives. Readings combine recent works and classics to give a sense both of where the field has been and where it is going. Topics covered include political history, religious interactions (among Christians and between Christians, Jews and Muslims), urban history, the history of the book, Atlantic history, the history of science, and the Enlightenment. The class also provides the opportunity to explore a single topic of choice in greater depth.

HIST 2970F. Problems in Modern Jewish History - Reading.

This course examines significant issues in the history and historiography of modern European Jewry from the mid-18th century to WWII. It is divided into four units each of which considers a thematic question that has been of interest to European Jewish historians, including: emancipation, integration, and acculturation; gender and the study of modern Jewish history; approaches to minority identity; and history and memory. Written permission required.

HIST 2970G. Early Modern European Empires.

This course addresses both the history and historiography of the most relevant European imperial experiences in Africa, Asia and America c. 1400-1800. It will focus on the structure and dynamics of the Iberian case(s), as well as in the profile of the so-called Second European expansion led by the Dutch, the English and a number of other (minor) European examples. Particular emphasis will be given to the relations between these imperial bodies and other (non-European) Empires, by focusing on cross-cultural contacts and conflicts, hybrid societies and images. Restricted to juniors, seniors, and graduate students only. P

HIST 2970H. Special Topics Seminar: American Political History.

This graduate seminar will explore a range of approaches to the study of America’s political past from the colonial period to the late twentieth century, including scholarship on electoral politics, the state, political culture, grassroots politics and resistance, the politics of gender and family, and American political development. We will analyze how scholars have defined and redefined the field over time and throughout we will interrogate the question, “what is political history?”

HIST 2970I. Methodologies of the Ancient World.

No description available. Open to graduate students only.

HIST 2970J. Early Modern British History-Reading.

No description available.

HIST 2970L. Race and U.S. Empire.

No description available.

HIST 2970M. Readings in East Asian History.

This seminar reviews recent and classic works in the flourishing historiography of East Asia and related fields, with attention to underlying research methodologies. We will pay attention to developments in transnational and global history as well as to "the local turn", and explore where methods and questions in the histories of different parts of East Asia and neighboring regions intersect and where they don't. Graduate students from all backgrounds are welcome; please contact the instructor before registering so that your area of interest can be reflected in the topics on the syllabus.

HIST 2970O. Modern Latin American History - Reading.

No description available.

HIST 2970P. Nineteenth and Twentieth Century American History - Reading.

No description available.

HIST 2970Q. Core Readings in 20th Century United States History.

Major topics and themes in 20th-century U.S. history. M

HIST 2970R. U.S. Social/Cultural History, 1877-present - Reading.

Case studies of prominent public intellectuals spanning the century from John Reed to George Wills, Mary McCarthy to Frances Fitzgerald.

HIST 2970U. Topics in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century American History.

M

HIST 2970V. Atlantic Empires.

No description available.

HIST 2970W. Graduate Readings in Early American History.

No description available.

HIST 2970X. Topics in the History of Empire and Culture.

No description available.

HIST 2970Y. History and Theory of Secularity.

No description available.

HIST 2970Z. Core Readings in Nineteenth Century Europe.

Provides an introduction to the central issues of nineteenth-century European history. It has two purposes: first, to help you refine your abilities to think historiographically; second, to assist you in preparing for your comprehensive exams. To that end, we will read both standard interpretations and newer scholarship.

HIST 2971A. Science in a Colonial Context.

This graduate seminar will consider the politics of science in colonies societies. Subjects covered include: the relationship between science and local (indigenous) knowledges, science and the "civilizing" mission, social relations in knowledge production, science and development, racial science and subject bodies, science and nationalism. Assignments will include book review, a review essay and leading discussion.

HIST 2971B. Topics in Twentieth Century Europe.

This course will introduce graduate students to current scholarship on major issues in twentieth century European history. Topics will include (but are not limited to) the causes and consequences of the two world wars; the emergence, workings, and collapse of authoritarian societies; the spread of mass culture and consumerism; Americanization; de-colonization; the European Union, and the collapse of the bi-polar political system. In the interest of introducing students to the significant historiographical debates of the field, they will read both standard historical interpretations and newer scholarship. M

HIST 2971C. Readings in American History.

Topics in American social and cultural history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

HIST 2971D. Passion, Dispassion, and the Scholar.

What role should passion and the imagination play in intellectual endeavor? Is the dispassionate, objective, and objectifying voice the only appropriate one in the arena of scholarship? How much can or should the scholar let his or her personality and personal investment in a subject appear on the page? The seminar will explore these and related questions by examining non-traditional modes of scholarly writing (primarily but not exclusively drawing on historians and anthropologists). This is not a seminar about theory and method, although such issues will inevitably be part of our discussions. It is a seminar about writing and scholarly voice. P

HIST 2971E. Latin American Historiography.

This course examines the development of historical writings on Latin America produced in the United States from the late nineteenth century until the present. We will focus on themes, such as race, gender, labor, subaltern studies, dependency theory, postcolonial analysis, and post-modernism, to understand the diverse approaches to Latin American history. M

HIST 2971F. Gender & Knowledge in Early Modern Europe.

HIST 2971G. Notions of Public & Private in Late Modern Europe.

HIST 2971H. Politics and Society in the 20th Century.

HIST 2971I. New Perspectives on Medieval History.

Over the past several decades, the field of medieval history has been reshaped radically. New approaches have changed the ways in which medievalists think about old subjects. Our understanding of medieval society itself has expanded as previously marginalized or unexplored subjects have become central to medievalists’ concerns. This seminar explores the ways in which medievalist historians have altered how they practice their craft in response to these developments. Readings in classic older works are juxtaposed with newer ones on the way to becoming classics themselves.

HIST 2971J. Topics in 19th c. U.S. History.

This state-of-the-field course will introduce students to nineteenth-century U.S. history, with specific attention to how recent transnational, imperial, institutional, and cultural approaches have reframed older debates over the "Age of Jackson," "Manifest Destiny," and the "Market Revolution." This seminar offers core readings for students preparing a comprehensive exam field, while providing others with content knowledge to teach this period of American history.

HIST 2971L. Borderlands: Violence and Coexistence.

Readings of theoretical and empirical studies in interstate and inter-ethnic relations in borderland regions throughout the world, with an emphasis on the modern period in East-Central. Open to graduate students only.

HIST 2971M. History of Medicine.

The history of medicine is a topic that can shed light on any period and place, since all aspects of human life are intertwined parts of the story: ideas, religion, culture, material life, economy, politics, social organization and legal institutions, etc. This reading course is meant to introduce graduate students to the main subjects debated in the field, so that by the end of the semester you will be able to read in the literature and to take up any related archival trail with confidence. Open to graduate students only. E

HIST 2971N. Critical Perspectives on Public and Private.

No description available. Open to graduate students only.

HIST 2971O. Graduate Preliminary Readings.

No description available.

HIST 2971P. Diaspora, Displacement, Transnationalism.

This reading seminar is designed to familiarize students with the most cited and current theories on these three transhistorical terms that capture the global phenomenon of human mobility across time and space, from antiquity to the present day. Related concepts include migration, emigration and immigration; exile, expulsion, repatriation and deterriorialization. The class will examine a few exemplary case studies; then students will develop their individual reading lists around these broad themes towards an exam field or a thesis/dissertation prospectus, and share their findings with each other by circulating papers online followed by discussion and critique in class.

HIST 2971R. Approaches to Middle East History.

This course is a rare opportunity that brings together graduate students from Harvard University and Brown University who are interested in the historiography of Middle East, Ottoman, and Islamic studies. Co-taught by Cemal Kafadar (Harvard) and Beshara Doumani (Brown), the meetings will alternate between Cambridge and Providence. The course covers the early modern and modern periods and considers a wide range of canonical and recent scholarship. Special attention will be paid to social and cultural histories that draw on materialist and discursive approaches and that engage larger debates in other disciplines.

HIST 2971T. Colonial Latin America.

This seminar focuses on the historiography of colonial Latin America since the 1960s. Topics include the explosive growth of indigenous-language sources for Mesoamerican history, the histories of childhood and sexuality, the spatial turn and GIS, connections between Latin America and Asia, and the impact of anthropology's ontological turn on environmental history and the history of animals. Requirements include short essays and a literature review.

HIST 2971U. Population Displacements and the Making of the Modern World.

Forced population displacements have long been an engine for the formation of both the modern world and knowledge regimes about that world. Through the frames of racial capitalism, settler colonial and indigenous studies, and environmental justice scholarship, this course explores the histories, ecologies, and subjectivities of displacement from the 15th century to the present. It also interrogates the epistemological erasures that render certain forms of displacement invisible. Students will lead classes on specific themes and case studies that match their interests.

HIST 2971W. Readings in Environmental History.

This course will introduce graduate students to major themes and problems in the field of environmental history. Topics may include climate, animals, the Anthropocene, empire, capitalism, comparative history, marine spaces, and the intersection of cultural, social, and gender history with the environment field, but will be chosen in part based on the interests of enrolled students. Readings will draw from classics and newly published material. Geography and time period are expansive. Discussion will use these works to ground major historiographical questions in environmental history, as well as issues of method, evidence, and narrative style.

HIST 2972A. Histories of Modernity.

Far from describing the merely recent past, the term modernity often signifies a distinct epoch in the human past. In this course, we will consider what historians studying various, distinct geographies mean by the modern period as well as what their choices might tell us about historical approaches to periodization and scales of analysis. Particular emphasis will be placed on past and present debates about the long nineteenth century as a threshold to modernity. We will consider major historiographical interventions on the Industrial Revolution, the Great Divergence, imperialism, nationalism, and mass politics and culture.

HIST 2972B. Graduate Readings in African History.

This course is a wide-ranging readings course in the field of African history. Readings will concentrate on, but not be restricted to, sub-Saharan Africa and the colonial and post-colonial periods. Taking a roots of history/new directions approach, the seminar will feature classic and recent works in economic, cultural, social, and environmental history. All graduate students welcome.

HIST 2972C. African American Women's History.

This graduate seminar examines the cultural, economic, political, and social history of Black women in the United States from slavery to the Civil Rights-Black Power era. Through a variety of secondary and primary sources, film and other multimedia, the course explores the myriad ways these women have experienced and resisted the “double burden” of racism and sexism in United States history. The course will consider the legacy of slavery and how African American women have defined their own identities as individuals, wives, mothers, community leaders, activists, and theorists. Paying careful attention to their diverse experiences, the course will examine Black women’s participation and leadership in a variety of institutions, organizations, and social movements. Major course themes include labor, class, politics, radicalism, feminism, internationalism, religion, sexuality, violence, and family.

HIST 2972D. Graduate Readings in Native American and Indigenous Histories: Decolonization and Methodologies.

This PhD-level readings seminar has two primary objectives. The first is to read widely in the recent literature of Native American and Indigenous History, including monographs and articles (readings admittedly tilt towards North America, but with a keen eye to other regions). The second aim is to engage the question of methods, epistemologies, and ways of knowing, both through traditional academic writing as well as Indigenous scholarship that models supplemental and even alternate epistemologies and understandings of what it means to do history and know about the past. As part of this class, we will hear directly from 2-3 Native and Indigenous scholars and knowledge keepers to help us think more critically about where the field is and where it should go.

HIST 2972E. Readings in Oppression and Resistance.

This seminar focuses on close readings of several iconic and influential texts on oppression and resistance in the modern era. Despite our growing awareness of the legacies and current realities of oppression, the deeper history of the mobilization of resistance to pervasive oppression in the past has become obscured by the passage of time, and misunderstood through selective citation and decontextualization. By carefully analyzing and contextualizing the writings by earlier generations we can thus better understand our own time, how we got to where we are, and how we can steer our future to safer and more just shores. Some great minds in the past have thought about the questions that concern us today. This course introduces students to these voices in the belief that they can serve as a guide to grasp the complexities of our own time.

HIST 2980B. Legal History.

An introduction for graduate students to the significance and methods of legal history, broadly defined. Students will engage with works in legal history from a variety of time periods and geographical areas, and they will be guided to sources related to their specific research interests. A major research essay will be required that draws from the models of legal history given and is based on original research into legal sources. E

HIST 2980C. Race, Ethnicity and Identity in Atlantic World.

This seminar examines the meaning of racial and ethnic identity in colonial Latin America. Our primary approach will be historiographical; we will begin with colonial concepts of racial hierarchy, then move on to national ideologies of mestizaje and indigenismo, the emergence of "race mixture" as a scholarly topic, the "caste vs. class" debate of the 1970s and 1980s, and finally recent works on the African diaspora.

HIST 2980D. Topics in Violence in Modern Europe: Interethnic Relations and Violence in Eastern Europe.

This seminar will examine recent studies on interethnic coexistence, violence, and genocide in East-Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th century. Readings will range from works on definitions of ethnicity and the making of nations to studies of communities and interpersonal relations. We will also read and listen to testimonies and analyze contemporary documents.

HIST 2980E. Social History in Early Modern England - Research.

Readings on select topics in early modern English social history. Topics include: marriage formation, crime, social unrest, gender issues, and popular culture. Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates.

HIST 2980F. Modern British History - Research.

No description available.

HIST 2980G. Topics in Violence in Modern Europe - Research.

No description available.

HIST 2980H. Early American History - Research.

Research seminar.

HIST 2980I. Problems in American Social History - Research.

An advanced examination of the issues and methodology of American urban and social history plus primary research in specific topics.

HIST 2980J. U.S. Women's/Gender History - Research.

Focus is 20th-century history. Open only to graduate students.

HIST 2980K. Passion, Dispassion, and the Scholar.

What role should passion play in intellectual endeavor? Should the scholar's personal involvement in a subject appear on the page? What is the value of the dispassionate voice as opposed to a narrative voice of immediacy? The seminar explores such issues in modes of scholarly writing (primarily but not exclusively historical and anthropological). Although questions of theory and method inevitably arise, this is a seminar about scholarly voice.

HIST 2980L. Research and Pedagogy.

This research seminar is geared to help graduate students think about the ways in which they can incorporate their own research into the courses they will teach. The final product for the seminar is a primary source unit and an accompanying essay tht can conceivably serve as a "teacher's guide." All fields and periods welcome. E

HIST 2980M. Nature, Space and Power: Environmental History.

No description available.

HIST 2980N. Gender and Knowledge.

No description available.

HIST 2980P. Theory of Everyday Life.

What do we mean by the "everyday" and how can we study it in the social sciences and represent it in the arts? We will focus on attempts to answer this question both on the theoretical and the empirical levels. Readings will include philosophers of everyday life and examples of recent scholarship in "everyday life studies" that have revolutionized the study of leisure, entertainment, national identity, decolonization and gender.

HIST 2980Q. Seminar in Early Modern British History.

No description available.

HIST 2980R. Cultures of Empire.

The goal of this course is to research and produce a piece of original historical scholarship, drawing on methodologies developed during the cultural turn in the study of empires. Early semester readings address approaches to studying empire (Marxian, Subaltern Studies, Cultural Studies, etc.) and various locations: British India, Japanese Manchuria, and Netherlands Indies, among others. The course then evolves into a history writing workshop for the rest of the semester, paying attention also to historical writing, including style, form, and narrative strategies. Relevant to historical inquiry into cross-cultural encounters in any time period.

HIST 2980S. Hannah Arendt and Her World.

This seminar will explore key concerns and paradigms in 20th-century intellectual history via a critical consideration of the thinking of Hannah Arendt (1906-75). In recent years, Arendt's work has earned renewed attention for its multidisciplinary, multicontinental importance as well as for its uncanny currency to the present political and academic moment. Her thinking is thus in many ways "migratory thinking." Migratory thinking involves first the diaspora and exchange of thinkers, most specifically through political exile and emigration during the Nazi period and after. It thus involves both the experience and theorization of "worldliness": the Enlightenment value that remains a key principle for Arendt, with special reference to Lessing. Migratory thinking also involves discursive movement among disciplines and cultures, for example from German philosophy to American political theory/science, and the complications of intellectual and cultural subjectivity of émigré as well as German Jewish thinking. Finally, the history and historical contingency that support this style of thinking emphasize the drive to thinking, responsibility, and judgment at a moment of danger. Readings and seminar discussions will focus on Arendt's work, read in dialogue with the work of thinkers with whom she was in dialogue (Benjamin, Broch, Heidegger, Scholem) and with the later work of thinkers whose own subject positions might be considered comparable with the concerns in the paragraph above (G. Rose, S. Neiman, S. Aschheim, J. Derrida et al.). Themes will include cosmopolitanism, nationalism, and totalitarianism, the global politics of race, capitalism, and exchange, religious/secular tensions, and the relations of society and politics to art and the imagination.

HIST 2980T. Minorities, Citizenship and Nation.

No description available.

HIST 2980U. Power, Culture, Knowledge.

"Truth isn't outside power, or lacking in power... [t]ruth is a thing of this world," wrote Michel Foucault in the mid 1970s. In this course we will read and examine Foucault's seminal works on knowledge and power, and the kinds of scholarship it has engendered at the intersections of history, art history, anthropology, political science and social theory. In addition to Foucault's major interlocutor, Edward Said, we will read Antonio Gramsci, Derrida and Walter Benjamin. We will end the semester with facing the challenge of historicizing our own political present through a number of contemporary thinkers. M

HIST 2980V. Early Modern Empires.

This seminar will explore various approaches to understanding the rise, expansion, and contraction of empires in the early modern period (ca. 1500-1800). Students will be required to write a major research essay based on primary sources.

HIST 2980W. First Person History in Times of Crisis: Witnessing, Memory, Fiction.

This seminar examines the relationship between History as a narrative of events and history as individual experience. Postulating that historical events as related by historians were experienced in numerous different ways by their protagonists, the seminar focuses on the complementary and contradictory aspects of this often fraught relationship at times of crisis, especially in war and genocide. While much time will be spent on World War II and the Holocaust, the seminar will engage with other modern wars and genocides across the world. Materials will include eyewitness reports, postwar testimonies and trial records, memoirs and relevant works of fiction. Open to graduate students only. M

HIST 2980X. History of Capitalism, 1500 to the Present.

This seminar seeks the history of capitalism at the intersection of economic history, business history, labor history, political economy, and the history of economic thought. This course does not presume that capitalism is a function of timeless human nature nor the inevitable product of market forces. Instead, the course contends that capitalism is a historically-specific and contingent system of organizing economic life, and must therefore be studied as embedded in politics, culture, and institutions. The course will run from the period of early modern global integration and the Atlantic Slave Trade though the recent era of deindustrialization and finance capitalism. Enrollment limited to 20 graduate students.

HIST 2981C. The Frontiers of Empire.

This class will look at interactions along and across imperial frontier zones throughout the world, with an emphasis on the pre-modern and early modern period. Readings will be both theoretical and empirical in nature, and will focus on themes including the conceptualization of space; practices and consequences of warfare, captive-taking, and slavery; identity- and secondary state-formation; economy and society; diplomacy and the negotiation of claims to authority.

HIST 2981E. Environmental History.

A topical seminar with global and chronologically broad scope, "Environmental History" surveys classic works and recent writing on explicitly environmental themes such as agriculture, conservation, energy, and anthropogenic change. Equally, it considers environmental treatments of major topics in other sub-fields such as war, science, imperialism, the body and senses, and animals. In examining this broad range of topics, we will seek what is distinctive about environmental history and how environmental considerations can enhance the students' own research.

HIST 2981F. The Politics of Knowledge.

How do we know what we know? What impact do social, cultural, and economic factors play in the production of knowledge? This course will introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of Science & Technology Studies by critically situating and historically contextualizing the construction of knowledge. Along the way, we will discuss some of the field’s most lively debates, including science and capitalism; the global circulation of knowledge; epistemic imperialism and postcolonial science studies; as well as the relationship between scientific and Indigenous knowledge traditions.

HIST 2981I. Theory From The South.

The “global south” is a working category today for a diversity of intellectual projects centered on the non-European postcolonial world. While this category is embedded in histories of empire and culture, critical thinking since the 1970s has already done much to “provincialize Europe” and interrogate the ways in which power and knowledge have been imbricated in the making of universal claims, institutional processes and historical self-understanding. This graduate seminar will draw upon lineages of anti-colonial thought and postcolonial critique to relocate and rethink the "south" as a generative source for theory and history.

HIST 2981J. The Body.

This seminar will consider theories of the body as a site of knowledge, politics, culture, gender, and identification in a broad range of temporal and geographic contexts. We will also examine how historians have written the history of the body, and what sources they have used to do so.

HIST 2981O. Seascapes of History.

This seminar explores the recent “oceanic turn” in history, examining how and why the sea and the maritime matter to interpretations of the past. Key readings will include general works that theorize new maritime history and thalassography, and studies focused on the history of specific oceanic and maritime areas (e.g. the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean), which illuminate sub-themes such as migration, colonization, empire building, trade, sailors’ culture, piracy, cultural attitudes toward the sea, religion and sea, and maritime environmental history. Readings will be drawn from a wide range of chronologies as well as geographies.

HIST 2990. Thesis Preparation.

For graduate students who have met the residency requirement and are continuing research on a full time basis.

HIST 2991. History Dissertation Writing Workshop.

This seminar is for History PhD students in residence at Brown who are post-exams and are at any stage of writing their dissertations. It is intended to support dissertators by providing a structured community for setting and sharing goals, writing, and discussing chapters-in-progress. It meets every other week and is a half credit S/NC course.

HIST 2992B. Topics in Islamic Studies: Methods and Theories (RELS 2400L).

Interested students must register for RELS 2400L.

HIST 2992E. Microhistory (ITAL 2050).

Interested students must register for ITAL 2050.

HIST 2993. Gender Matters (ITAL 2550).

Interested students must register for ITAL 2550.

HIST 2994. Roman Epigraphy (LATN 2120A).

Interested students must register for LATN 2120A.

HIST 2996. Premodern Art-Science, or the Work of Knowing in Europe before 1800 (HMAN 2400X).

Interested students must register for HMAN 2400X.

HIST 2997. Environmental Humanities (HMAN 2400I).

Interested students must register for HMAN 2400I.

HIST 2998. The World of Late Antiquity (CLAS 2100G).

Interested students must register for CLAS 2100G.