History
Professors NEEL, RAGAN, ROMMEL-RUIZ; Associate Professors ADLERSTEIN, KOHOUT, MEHTA, MURPHY (Chair), RATCHFORD, WILLIAMS; Assistant Professors SANCHEZ, SMITH; Lecturer GOLIGHTLY
History as a discipline views the past from today’s vantage point, asking how experience guides us. The diverse material of history — documents, artifacts, historical contexts — calls for rigorous analysis expressed in cogent written and oral argument. Its study prepares students for employment and further study in a wide variety of professions, among them law, business, government, nonprofit management, library and museum leadership, and teaching.
Skills essential to contemporary life are important products of the history major, but the curriculum of this department is more ambitious. It grounds students’ lives as well as their careers. Majors are educated to appreciate their own traditions and understand others. Their attention to politics, ideas, social structures, and economic systems informs their public contributions and their private choices. Just as we encourage ϳԹ students to understand how their predecessors in this country and around the world invested their lives with meaning and beauty, we empower them to frame their own futures with flexible imaginations, forceful intellects, and a lively sense of the expanse of human possibility.
Major Requirements
The history major offers two tracks to completion: Track 1 emphasizes breadth of study and Track 2 gives students the opportunity to specialize in a thematic field.
Units in Major: 11
Requirements for Track 1:
- 8 electives which satisfy the following requirements:
- Geographic Distribution: At least 1 course in four of the following ten regions: Central Europe and Eastern Europe; East Asia; Latin America and Caribbean; North Africa and Middle East; North America; South Asia; Southeast Asia; sub-Saharan Africa; Western Europe; Comparative (4 units)
- Time Period: At least 1 course focused on the 17th century or earlier (1 unit)
- 300-level: 1 300-level course (1 unit)
- Junior Seminar: HY399 (1 unit)
- Capstone Sequence: HY410 and HY420 (2 units)
Requirements for Track 2:
- 8 electives which satisfy the following requirements:
- Fields of Specialization: At least 5 courses in one of the following fields of specialization (5 units):
- Politics, Law, Social Justice
- Space, Place, Environment
- Ideas, Science, Medicine
- Empire, Nation, War
- Sexuality, Body, Affect
- Geographic Distribution: At least 1 course in two of the following ten regions: Central Europe and Eastern Europe; East Asia; Latin America and Caribbean; North Africa and Middle East; North America; South Asia; Southeast Asia; Sub-saharan Africa; Western Europe; Comparative (2 units)
- Time Period: At least 1 course focused on the 17th century or earlier (1 unit)
- 300-level: 1 300-level course (1 unit)
- Junior Seminar: HY399 (1 unit)
- Capstone Sequence: HY410 and HY420 (2 units)
Students who maintain a 3.6 GPA in the major and submit their completed thesis by the deadline (end of Block 7) may be considered for Distinction in History.
Minor Requirements
The history minor offers two tracks to completion: Track 1 emphasizes breadth of study and Track 2 gives students the opportunity to specialize in a thematic field.
Units in Minor: 5
Requirements for Track 1:
- Geographic Distribution: 4 courses covering at least three of the following ten regions: Central Europe and Eastern Europe; East Asia; Latin America and Caribbean; North Africa and Middle East; North America; South Asia; Southeast Asia; Sub-Saharan Africa; Western Europe; Comparative (4 units)
- Junior Seminar: HY399 (1 unit)
Requirements for Track 2:
- Field of Specialization: 4 courses with at least 3 being courses in one of the following fields of specialization (4 units):
- Politics, Law, Social Justice
- Space, Place, Environment
- Ideas, Science, Medicine
- Empire, Nation, War
- Sexuality, Body, Affect
- Junior Seminar: HY399 (1 unit)
Courses
History
An introductory survey of human culture and society through the comparison of Europe and one other major area of the world from ancient to the modern period, focusing on fundamental topics in the development of world civilizations, including material culture, political organization, and aesthetics. The course will emphasize critical moments in historical development, thematic connections, and primary textual and visual sources. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Writing in the Discipline requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Western civilization from ancient to modern times. Cultural, social, and political developments that shaped the modern world. The department offers this course in sections designated Europe or Atlantic World. Atlantic World includes the study of the heritage of Western civilization in the Western hemisphere. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course examines not only the military, economic, and political significance of Africa in the Second World War, but also the harsh realities of oppressive living conditions in “Free France,” the limitations of the Atlantic Charter, and the experiences of black soldiers in German internment camps. Ultimately, this course seeks to reinterpret the Second World War by exploring lived experiences, social movements, cultural expression, and political activism in Africa. (Not offered 2024-25).
As the German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin noted, the march of progress is like a storm that leaves only ruins in its wake – ruined environments, ruined cultures, ruined bodies. Whereas some have sought refuge from these storms of progress in nostalgic attempt to retrieve – and, in some cases, return to – lost times, others have eschewed such romantic pursuits, seeking instead to forge alternative ways of being in the world, some modicum of a right life in the wrong one. After examining the destructive dynamics associated with capitalist modernity, this course will turn its attention to the oppositional milieus and defiant voices that have flourished in modernity’s ruins. Although the course makes occasional forays into global history, the primary focus will be on 19th- and 20th-century Europe. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
East Asian civilization from ancient to modern times. Cultural, social and political developments that shaped East Asian nations and their place in the modern world. Introduces basics of historical method: contextualization, analysis, and critical evaluation of primary sources and their significance. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
An introduction to history through the study of a special subject in depth. Emphasis on the ways in which historians find and interpret the materials of the past. For students who do not complete the West in Time requirement in the History Department, a gateway to the History major. Topics designated according to the specialties of the faculty.
As a burgeoning turn-of-the-century metropolis, the capital of Imperial Germany, an early epicenter of queer culture in the 1920s, the administrative center of the Nazi genocide, a frontline city in the Cold War, a hotbed of leftist activism in the 1960s, and a symbolic capital of post-Cold War Europe, the city of Berlin has played an outsized role in twentieth-century history. Using a wide array of primary documents (ranging from experimental films and mass-market novels to political manifestos and architectural plans), this course explores the history of Berlin from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. In so doing, it both familiarizes students with some of the central events of twentieth-century European history and serves as an example for how to employ the tools of cultural and urban history. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
Latin American history from pre-Columbian times to the present. Emphasis on colonial Mexico and Peru, the centers of Spanish power in the New World, and the political and social development of post-independence Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. Introduces historiography and the basics of historical method: contextualization, analysis and critical evaluation of primary sources and their significance. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Aegean and Greek archeological, historical, literary, and philosophical texts, with emphasis on those ideas formative in shaping Western culture. The development and transformations of these ideas as reflected in selected texts from the early Christian era, the Enlightenment or the Modern Age. The rise of individualism and its conflicts with community, ritual relationships to nature vs. separation and exploitation, the relation of theology to the ordering of experience, and how psyche both forms and is formed by its relationships to community, nature, and god(s). Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Two block course that introduces the full sweep of American History from its pre-contact, 'New World' beginnings to the recent past. Students will experience how history is made, understood, revised, and debated. Themes include cultural encounters and adaptation complexities of ethnicity and immigration; movement; the success and failures of republican ideology, capitalism, individualism and community; and the formation of American cultures. (Not offered 2024-25).
Examines large-scale social structures and the question of 'ordinary' men and women from the seventh century C.E. to the present. Through a range of historical approaches-cultural, intellectual, political and social-and an emphasis on close reading of primary materials, students explore in what ways the histories of Islamic Civilization, Western Civilization, African Civilization, and Central Asian Civilization were connected histories and how people in the Middle East have critiqued their own societies and those of their contemporaries. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course examines art and cultural history in Europe from Antiquity through to the twentieth century. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, one which seeks to bring art history and history in critical dialogue with one another, the students and professors will interrogate the meta-narrative of “progress” across time. In many ways, succeeding periods engaged in conversations with their pasts to make claims of domination through pictorial and cultural production. But it is important, too, to examine counter-narratives made by subaltern groups of the various eras, along the critical axes of gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, race and other markers of identity. Students will be called upon to think systematically about “who” they themselves are in order to engage with the past and explore human similarities, as well as differences, across a long period of time. Thinking systematically about the notion of “critical bias” and the need to analyze the past in its own terms, as well as in ours, will open up avenues to thinking about the present in new ways. We will examine the most important eras of European history, in particular, Ancient Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the early modern period, and the more recent past. (Not offered 2024-25).
Selected topics in the study of history. Specific content and emphasis to be determined by the instructor.
Emerging in the 1920s as a radical, right-wing fringe group seeking to rejuvenate Germany following its catastrophic defeat in the First World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party would go on to become one of the most destructive forces of the Twentieth Century. After first examining the Nazi rise to power in the wake of the Great Depression and the subsequent brutality of its reign, the course will delve into the manifold, and often contradictory, efforts to reconstitute European society after the war. In so doing, it will pay particularly close attention to the multiple 'afterlives' of fascism including the resurgence of neo-Nazi political movements, the subcultural appropriation of fascist imagery, and the multifaceted attempts to memorialize and to “come to terms with” the manifold traumas of the Nazi years. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Born amidst the crucible of the First World War, the Soviet Union sought to realize a progressive, socialist vision, a utopia on earth in which all people would be equal, nature would be conquered, and society would be freed from the destructive dynamics of capitalism. From the outset, however, the implementation of these utopian blueprints was coupled with astonishing acts of violence – the dreamworlds of socialism were constantly shadowed by their opposite. Taking seriously both the utopian and the dystopian aspects of the soviet experiment, this course traces the violent emergence, the piecemeal realization, and the protracted decline of the Soviet Union. Relying heavily on literature, art, and film from the era, the course takes an explicitly cultural historical approach to soviet history. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
Broad approach to the history of American traditions and institutions from Anglo-American settlement to the outbreak of the Civil War, addressing Native American-Anglo American encounters; colonization and development of Anglo-American culture and society; African Slave Trade and the Plantation Economy; American Revolution; Jeffersonian Ideology and Westward Expansion; Jacksonian Democracy and the Industrial Revolution; the Politics of Slavery and Secession. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Broad approach to the history of the United States since the Civil War, focusing on multiple meanings of American freedom and the rise of the modern United States as a global power, including attention to Emancipation and Reconstruction; Industrialization, Migration, and Immigration; Civil Rights Movements and Protest Politics; the Great Depression, New Deal and WWII; American Foreign Policy and the Cold War; the Great Society, Vietnam, and the Challenge to the New Deal Order. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: SHB requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Detailed study of a period (such as the end of the Roman Republic or Periclean Athens) or a theme (such as slavery or the rise and fall of the middle class) in Greek and/or Roman history.
Introduces students to the history of native peoples primarily in North America. The course includes histories of individual native groups as well as the relationship between American Indians and a variety of Europeans from before contact until the present. Examines a variety of primary and secondary materials to see patterns in the ways that Native Americans have been affected by the process of conquest, the ways in which Anglo-Europeans have responded to Native Americans, and in the ways in which American Indians have become a part of and remained apart from 'mainstream' American culture. As a broader goal, we also look at the way 'history' is made, understood, and used by very different cultural traditions. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course explores the ways the state, church, and the people dealt with crime and viewed justice in Renaissance, early modern, and modern Europe. Attention to topics such as heresy, the witch craze, and treason and to what ordinary and great trials reveal about changing attitudes toward criminal justice. (Not offered 2024-25).
A survey of American history from the perspective of the environment, beginning with the biological and cultural invasion of the New World in 1492 and ending with current environmental problems and their historical roots. Topics include Native American vs. Euro-American views of nature, the impact of changing economic systems on the environment, and the impact of the landscape on various American cultures. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
Athenian Democracy. The Greeks with Near Eastern and Indo-European background. Panhellenic epic and religion, the polis, philosophy, history, tragedy and comedy. Attention throughout to Greek and Latin literary forms, but no knowledge of ancient languages required. (Not offered 2024-25).
Focus on the development of Rome, from a small city ruled by kings, to a regional power ruled under a Republic. The course will trace Rome's expansion through Italy, its conflict with Carthage and will closely examine the end of the Republic. Individuals discussed will include the Gracchi, generals Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, and Rome's greatest politician (and author) Cicero. (Also listed as Classics 216.) (Not offered 2024-25).
The process of conquering the American continent from 1492 to the present. An examination of the variety of forms that Euro-American conquest took (exploration, religion, economic development, settlement, and military encounter), the impact of conquest on native peoples, the social and economic development of the frontiers, and the lives that people led and lead in places considered frontiers. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement.
This two-block course will survey the history of the Eurasian region from Eastern Europe to the Central Asian and Pacific areas of Eurasia, with an important theme being the rise and fall of the Russian Empire, and the rise and fall of the Soviet bloc. The focus throughout will be on the ways in which religious, cultural, and ethnic identities were shaped by, accommodated to, and resisted the construction of national boundaries and identities. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
The Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Soviet successor states in the 20th century. Topics including the collapse of the Empire during the First World War, the attempted ‘building of socialism’ in the Soviet period, the crisis of the Soviet system, and how Soviet conceptions of the relation between ethnicity and nationality shaped political and cultural identities before and after 1991. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Focus on the development of the Roman state in the late first century B.C. under the emperor Augustus. The city, its monuments, its art, its literature, bureaucracy and territorial expansion, the role of women, and various social and minority groups will all be discussed. In particular, the course will emphasize important and influential literary figures, such as Horace, Ovid, Propertius, Virgil and Augustus himself. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course is a survey of African history from approximately 1800 to 1960. We will explore and analyze the final decades of the Atlantic slave trade, the rise of European colonialism in Africa, anti-colonial resistance, nationalism, and decolonization. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
This course focuses on major political, social, economic, and cultural transitions in African history from 1960 to the present. We will think through the rise and fall of apartheid in South Africa, the Cold War, environmental crises and activism, the struggle for gender equality and LGBTQIA+ rights, student movements, Arab Spring, the COVID-19 pandemic and other public health issues, and more. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Examines the origins of Chinese civilization, from the divination rituals of the theocratic Bronze Age Shang Dynasty to the mighty Han. Considers the great religious and philosophical traditions of China's axial age: Confucianism, Daoism, and others vying for influence in China's bloody 'Warring States' period. Students will understand the political, economic, cultural and spiritual patterns that gave shape to classical Chinese civilization. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Mass culture, according to its many critics, consists of shallow forms of entertainment that commodify and erase “authentic” modes of cultural expression. Whether members of the avant-garde or the counterculture, whether on the right or on the left, critics of mass culture have ignored its creative, world-making capacities, seeking instead to build authentic, unmediated lives outside of the pop sensibilities of their times. Analyzing a variety of pop cultural artifacts alongside the political, artistic, and academic critiques of mass culture produced by both the left and the right, this course explores mass culture and its multifaceted discontents over the course of the long twentieth century. While focused mainly on twentieth-century Europe, the course will make occasional forays into global history. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course will follow the turbulent history and politics of China from the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 through the post-Mao reforms. Using primary documents, personal accounts, and scholarly studies, students will assess China's political and cultural changes and continuities in historical context. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course will trace the social, political, and cultural developments in Japan from the first Parliamentary elections in 1890 to the current fiscal crisis in the 1990s. Using a wide range of sources, students will explore major themes in Japan's empire, World War, economic miracle, and troubled role as Asian leader. Major themes will include cross-cultural contact, world systems, and women's history. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Focus on how conservative Roman republican ideals were reconciled with an increasingly Hellenized empire dominated by an imperial dynasty. Following a brief survey of prior Roman history, the course will examine the development of the Roman state in the first century AD under the Julio-Claudian emperors. The course will proceed to consider the Empire’s evolution and management under subsequent Flavian and Antonine dynasties. The city, its monuments, its art, its literature, bureaucracy and territorial expansion, the role of women, various social and minority groups, and the growth of Christianity will all be discussed.
The English colonies in America, their founding and development within the British Empire. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
The movement for independence and the corollary movement to restructure politics internally, from the end of the Seven Years’ War through the Revolution and Confederation to the adoption of the U. S. Constitution. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement.
Initial development of the United States under the Constitution through the Virginia dynasty and Jacksonian democracy. Party formation; conflicts in political economy; diplomacy; expansion; social and cultural growth. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement.
The causes, strategies, and impact of the Civil War on the United Sates. Slavery, sectional controversy, political crises; civilian and military life during the war; the successes and failures of Reconstruction; the problems of race. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Cultural expression, and race relations in the aftermath of WWI; changing sexual and racial relations and the anti-modernist response in the 1920s; the Harlem Renaissance; the causes and consequences of the Great Depression and FDR and the New Deal; the coming of WWII. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Domestic politics and political realignments from Truman to Nixon; McCarthyism and the beginnings of the Cold War; covert action and direct intervention in U.S. foreign policy; Civil Rights; Black Power; feminism; and controversies regarding the American family. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
American foreign policy from the 'Vietnam Syndrome' to the end of the Cold War to the invasion of Iraq; Americans and the Islamic world; transformations of the Republican and Democratic Parties and the Office of the President; negotiating race in the post-Civil Rights era; the 'New World Order' and the new immigration; religion, families, and gender and their roles in partisan politics. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: SHB requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Political independence in the 1810s in La Plata and Chile. The impact of immigration, urbanization, modernization, populism, nationalism, militarism and redemocratization. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Portuguese colonization, political independence in a neo-colonial economy, the Brazilian Empire, the Republic. The emergence of modern Brazil: populism, corporation and militarism. The institution of slavery and its legacy. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement.
Spanish conquest and administration in New Spain and Peru, the Catholic Church, internal and external colonial economies, the Bourbon reforms and political independence in the 1820s; class, caste and gender during the colonial period. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
The Aztec and other Indian peoples’ influence in Mexican history and thought; Spanish colonial legacy; Enlightenment, Liberal, and Conservative political philosophies; Mexico’s relationship to the United States; roles of the Church and of violence from European encounter through Revolution (1910-1921) and into Mexico’s current precarious social and political situation. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement.
Emphasizes the intellectual precursors and historical development of the federal union of 1787 and of early American foreign policy. Considers America before the Civil War as a system of states and explores through debates over the American union and early foreign policy a range of theoretical issues in international relations. (Not offered 2024-25).
African cultural backgrounds, African slavery in colonial British America and the U. S. to 1860; free Black people from 1790 to 1860 and antislavery movements. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement.
S. since the Civil War. Black Reconstruction; Black urban settlement; literary and artistic movements in the 1920s; civil rights struggles; recent social and political expressions. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement.
The history of mainland and maritime Southeast Asian societies from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, with special attention to Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Burma and the Philippines. How did the social, cultural, and ecological diversity of the region impact the evolution of these societies? What role did Chinese and South Asian diasporas play in this process? How did the colonial experiences of British, French, Spanish and American rule shape their emergence as modern nations? Explores these and other questions via a variety of visual and textual sources including novels, photographs, film, and historical narrative. (Not offered 2024-25).
A thematic survey of Korean history from the earliest times to the present covering social, cultural and political developments from the Three Kingdoms period through the Silla unification, Koryo and Choson dynasties to the modern era. Special emphasis on the twentieth century. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement.
This course treats gender roles and family life throughout the European past, with comparative attention to families of other historical cultures and to relationships within non-human primate communities. It emphasizes the historical agency of women and children generally elided from traditional master narratives of Western Civilization, demonstrating how feminist and ethnohistorical approaches can reveal their experience. Course materials will include historiographical and anthropological literature as well as primary documents, literary works and visual sources. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
In examining the privileged role of cities and urban history within Islamicate history, we interrogate what it has meant to speak of an 'Islamic City' and how we can understand cities as spaces that both shape and reflect social relations. To deepen our engagement with sensory and lived experiences in urban spaces over time, this course features a practice of daily mapping and visual notetaking. Students then investigate a historical or contemporary ‘Islamic City’ of their choosing. Meets the Critical Learning: CP requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
This course examines the intertwined histories of what we now call Islam and Science. We’ll consider moments of mutual flourishing as well as contention, with attention to exchange among Muslim and non-Muslim communities and the relation of science to Islamic and European imperialism. Working closely with primary texts, we will interrogate concepts of rationality, the natural world, and how we tell these histories. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
This is an introductory level course that explores the historical processes that have formed South Asia. Topics include British colonialism; nationalism and anti-colonialism; social and religious reform movements; independence and Partition; and the economic, political, and social issues facing the postcolonial nation-states of South Asia. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
This course explores changes in gender and sexual relations across social communities and through time in South Asia. Key topics covered in this course include the impact of colonialism, nationalism, and socio-religious reform movements; law and the postcolonial state; the cultural politics of sexuality; masculinities; and local and transnational feminisms. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
The course examines the interaction between Europeans and the natural world from the Renaissance to the present. It looks at how nature shaped the ways Europeans lived and worked and how, in turn, they thought about and behaved toward nature. In particular, it explores the impact of the Scientific Revolution, industrialization, and mass culture on the changing interplay between nature, society, and culture. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Educational institutions and their relationship to society from the Renaissance to the present. The rise of mass education and its impact on the structure and purpose of the educational system. (Not offered 2024-25).
Development of an Islamic world through formation of key institutions of Islamic urban life, the changing relationships of tribal and agrarian societies to urban society, and the differentiation of public and private space. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Analysis of the variety of lived experiences and questions of freedom and authority in everyday life in the Middle East. Attention to the impact of modernity on gender roles and social order in the Middle East. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
The pre-contact history of Anasazi and Athabascan peoples from anthropological and mythological perspectives; the causes and consequences of the Spanish entrada and attempts at missionization of the Indian peoples of New Mexico and the California coast; development of mestizo society; the arrival of the Anglo-Americans and the Mexican-American War. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement.
The adaptation of Native American and Hispanic peoples to Anglo-American culture and politics; the causes and consequences of the loss of Hispanic lands; the evolution of family life and religious practices; indigenous views of modernity. Films, artistic expression, and works of fiction as well as historical sources. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Explores key themes in Southern history from colonial settlement through the American Civil War. Examines the distinctiveness of the American South, and how Southern life was shaped by slavery, particularly in the ways the plantation economy informed Southern political culture, gender and race relations. Other important issues include: Anglo-American encounters with Native Americans, the Great Awakening, the American Revolution, Jeffersonian republicanism, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and the rise of Southern nationalism. (Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
This course provides an overview of the history of human rights. We examine different genealogies of human rights, chart the shifting meanings of “human” and “rights” over time, and explore debates in the application of rights. Key topics include the philosophical foundations of rights; capitalism, imperialism, and rights; universalism vs. cultural relativism; and the complementary discourse of humanitarianism. (Not offered 2024-25).
Exploration of Europeans’ expressions of identity and community from the close of Mediterranean antiquity to the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Consideration of literary texts, social organization, and ritual practices, with emphasis on Christian Europe as continually self-defining against its pagan and Muslim frontiers. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
Scientific, religious and artistic achievements of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
The birth of the modern state and the creation of modern society. From the end of the sixteenth-century Reformation and the religious wars through the crisis of the seventeenth century, as well as the making of the constitutional order in England and the absolutist state in France. Political, social, and cultural perspectives. (Not offered 2024-25).
Causes and the social and political effects of the French Revolution, the Revolutions of 1848, and the Industrial Revolution. Particular attention to the process of revolutionary change and to political movements including liberalism, Marxism, and nationalism. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
The course analyzes the origins of 'modernity' in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Beginning with the Scientific Revolution, it then looks at the social and political environment that made the 'Republic of Letters' possible. A wide variety of primary-source texts, including social and political criticism, novels and poetry, painting and sculpture, will be examined. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Changes in European thought from the early modern to the modern periods examined through the works of representative writers, philosophers, political theorists, scientists and artists (including Locke, Galileo, Hegel, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, Foucault, and others). The relationships between these changes and social developments. (Not offered 2024-25).
The “revolt against reason.” The effects of World War I and the Great Depression on society and politics. Analysis of the appeal of Bolshevism and Fascism. Particular attention to Mussolini and Hitler’s successful challenge to liberal governments and to the Spanish Civil War. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
World War II and Its Aftermath in Europe, 1939-2000. The outbreak, course, and the effects of the War, including the advent of Communism in eastern Europe, European integration, and the 'economic miracle' in western Europe. The emergence of consumer society, the spread of popular culture, and the development of mass education. Attention to the challenges of decolonization and immigration Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Herodotus, sometimes called the 'father of lies,' and Thucydides, sometimes called the first political scientist, treated as the first historians. Study of the ways of conceiving history and its relation to the peoples and periods explored. No Greek or Latin required. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
Critical issues in the philosophy of history and historical methodology as seen from the standpoint of the historian and the philosopher. (Offered by individual arrangement.) (Not offered 2024-25).
Selected topics in the history of one or more world regions. Thematic concentration determined by the instructor.
Analysis of sexual roles and sexual practices in the world before the concept of ‘sexual identity’ emerged in the late nineteenth century. Examination of how different religious traditions such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, and Buddhism have viewed sex, and exploration of a wide variety of topics including pornography, prostitution, and same-sex sexual behavior throughout the pre-modern world. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement.
After examination of the birth of ‘sexuality’ in late nineteenth-century Europe, exploration of the acceptance of and resistance to this new conceptual model throughout the world. Attention to heterosexuality and homosexuality, intersexuality, and ‘perversion,’ concluding with analysis of the contemporary cultural wars over sexuality in Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Social, intellectual, and spiritual ferment between the Investiture Contest of the 1170s and the death of Francis of Assisi in 1226, with special attention to ideology of expansionism in the eastern Mediterranean and diversity of belief within Latin Christendom. Readings in primary sources for military action in the Middle East, pogroms in the Rhineland, saints’ lives, and persecution of heretical groups, as well as major recent works of historical criticism. (Not offered 2024-25).
Examines the representation of history in film. It compares a series of films to major themes and issues in the historiographical literature and raises questions about the ways films should adhere to the academic standards of the historical discipline. Students will read significant debates among cinematic and academic historians and explore the possibilities and limitations of cinematic presentations of history.
An examination of the relationships, both similarities and differences, of history and literature. Using selected theoretical texts from Aristotle to the present, traditional narrative historical texts, experimental histories, fictions based on imagined thoughts and actions of historical figures, and comparisons of historical/biographical texts and historical novels, the course explores the different and/or similar purposes and functions of historical writing and literary writing, and the truth claims of each as forms of narrative and knowledge. In addition, we will read history literally and literature historically in order to interrogate the uses and limitations of both forms of writing. (Not offered 2024-25).
We live in a haunted landscape, an environment that, to quote Vladimir Nabokov, is filled with objects and places “through which the past shines.” Although some of these vectors of the past – monuments, for example, or even museums – can serve to strengthen structures of domination in the present, this is not always true. Indeed, old houses, city streets, and discarded objects can retain traces of their original contexts; haunted palimpsests of layered time that, according to some theorists at least, can open the way to different futures. Analyzing a diverse array of texts from a range of disciplines this course explores how our visions of the past (and our conceptions of the future) are, to a large extent, mediated by the built environment. As a 300-level course, the class will culminate in a 15-page research paper. (Not offered 2024-25).
A junior seminar organized around comparative analysis of a common theme or topic, employing both historical and political science approaches to analysis and research. Designed principally for History/Political Science majors, but others may be admitted with consent of instructors.
An examination of the effect of total war, extremism, and economic crisis on politics and society, with special attention to fascism, the resistance, post World War II revival, and to cultural movements such as the avant-garde, futurism, and existentialism. (Not offered 2024-25).
This 300-level, co-taught course brings together historical and philosophical methodologies to explore a rotating theme, such as: “African History and Philosophy,” “History and Philosophy of Science,” or “The Philosophy of History.” Although conceived as a cornerstone course for the History-Philosophy Major, all are welcome. Students may take the course more than once, if taught on a different topic. With approval from the student’s advisors, it may be used to satisfy the 300-level History-Philosophy course requirements listed under “Thematic Coursework.”
Social and cultural history of China under the last two imperial dynasties, the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911), with emphasis on print culture and popular literature, examination culture, religious belief and practice, social structure and statecraft. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement.
Analyzes the relationship between law, society and culture in China during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1910) dynasties. Considers the classical foundations of Chinese jurisprudence, then examines late imperial culture using legal codes, case records, popular fiction and contemporary historical scholarship to explore the relationship between state and society in this period, in particular the relationship between social hierarchies and configurations of power. Culminates in a substantial research project based on primary sources. Meets the Critical Learning: HP requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Formation of the new nation that Hitler said in 1933 the world would not recognize. Germany’s catalysis of European and world transformations, as well as its institution of dictatorship and genocide at home. Political, economic, social/cultural, intellectual, and military aspects of German experience. (Not offered 2024-25).
An examination of traditional and new methods of studying the past and an exploration of the debate over the nature and the meaning of history. Designed primarily for history majors, but others may be admitted with the consent of the department. Meets the Writing in the Discipline requirement.
Students learn how to develop a research topic, advanced library and primary document research, and historical research design and organization. Students meet regularly to discuss their work in progress. Usually, a central text is also discussed throughout the semester. (Semester-long extended format course.) (Not offered 2024-25).
An advanced seminar on selected topics and themes in historical study.
Independent, primary source research. Particular content and emphasis of the paper to be determined in consultation with supervising professor. To be taken in the block immediately following HY 410.
An interdisciplinary, primary source-based thesis on a subject of interest to the student. Independent study format with regular consultation between the student and the faculty supervisors.
An interdisciplinary, primary-source based thesis on a subject of interest to the student and approved by two faculty supervisors, one in Philosophy and one in History. Independent study format with regular consultation between the student and the faculty supervisors.
Directed reading and preparation of a thesis.
(Summer only 2024-25).