Bard College Catalogue

Bard College Catalogue 2012-13

Historical Studies

http://historicalstudies.bard.edu

Faculty

Overview

The Historical Studies Program focuses primarily, but not exclusively, on political, social, economic, and cultural aspects of history. The program encourages ­students to examine history through the prism of other relevant disciplines (for example, sociology, anthropology, economics, philosophy) and different forms of expression (art, film, literature, drama, architecture). The program also introduces students to a variety of methodological perspectives used in historical research and to philosophical assumptions about men, women, and society that underlie these perspectives.

Areas of Study

Study plans can be divided into the following categories: national, regional, or local history (for example, American, European, Asian, Russian); period-oriented history (ancient, medieval, early modern, modern); and topical specializations (environmental history, urban history, diplomatic history, ethnic history, African American history, history of gender and sexuality, history of ideas, history of science and technology). Individual study plans may be further subdivided into specific areas of concentration.

Requirements

In the Lower College, students are expected to take three or four history courses covering different regions and time periods and using a variety of research methodologies. Students are required to take a global core course before graduation, and preferably before Moderation. For Moderation, students are required to submit the standard two short papers and a ­sample paper on a historical subject. By the time of their graduation, students must have completed between six and eight history courses covering at least three world regions and one period prior to 1800. As part of the preparation for their Senior Project, juniors should take a Major Conference.

Recent Senior Projects

“A Failure of a Regime: Vichy’s Attempts to Corporatize the Jews of France”
“Against Work: Autonomist Marxist Tendencies in 1970s Italy”
“Popular Culture and Nationalism in the Modern Republican Party and Argentina’s Peronism”
“Walt Disney: An Imaginative Escape”

Courses

The course descriptions that follow are presented numerically, beginning with 100-level introductory classes and continuing through 300-level seminars. Tutorials and Major Conferences are also offered regularly; recent examples include Anarchism, Critical Geography, and The Decision to Drop the Bomb. 

Revolution
History 1001
cross-listed: asian studies, human rights
This course analyzes and compares some of the most iconic and influential revolutions in world history, including the French Revolution of 1789, the Bolshevik Revo­lution of 1917, and China’s Communist Revolution of 1921–49. Other revolutionary events examined include the German Peasant Revolt of 1525, China’s Cultural Revolution, the protests by students and intellectuals that rocked Europe in 1968, and the “velvet revolutions” and near revolutions that transformed state socialism in 1989.  

The Making of Europe to 1815
History 101
The second millennium opened a new era of European ascendancy. For 300 years, Northern Europeans improved agriculture and lived longer, and cities flourished as centers of commerce and culture. Then came a little ice age and the Black Death, followed by famines and epidemics. Yet the period also saw the rise of literacy, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the creation of a global empire. To understand the paradoxical making of Europe, students examine primary sources and modern ­analyses.

Europe since 1815
History 102
cross-listed: gis, human rights, res, victorian studies
The first half of the course, from the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, covers such topics as the establishment of parliamentary democracy in Great Britain, the revolutions of 1848, and European imperialism. The second half focuses on the Great War, the Russian Revolution, the Great Depres­sion, the rise of fascism, the Holocaust, the Cold War, and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. 

From Empire to Superpower
History 106
cross-listed: american studies, gis
This course examines the international role of the United States in the 20th century. The course covers the Treaty of Versailles, the rise of fascism, Pearl Harbor, the decision to drop the atom bomb, the Cold War, and Vietnam. Students are asked to weigh the role of economic, strategic, and moral concepts in the formulation of American policy.

War and Peace: A History of International Relations, 1878–2001
cross-listed: gis, victorian studies
History 120  
A survey of modern international history, beginning in 1878 with the Congress of Berlin and a war in Afghanistan and moving chronologically toward 9/11 and another war in Afghanistan. Special attention is given to the three great conflicts of the 20th century (World Wars I and II, and the Cold War) and the shifting balance of power in Europe and Asia, as well as to the policies of the Great Powers and the ideological forces that defined them.

France and Empire in the Early Modern World
History 124
cross-listed: africana studies, french studies
The early modern world encompasses the histories of peoples and economies, and the circulation of ideas, products, and humans through long-distance oceanic travel. It helped to formulate the globalized, modern world we live in today. To study greater France is an opportunity to consider how the language of nation and empire overlays complex networks of contact, exchange, and identity between metropolitans, indigenous peoples, and those without states. 

Crisis and Conflict: Introduction to Modern Japanese History
History 127
cross-listed: asian studies
Japan in the mid-19th century was beleaguered by British and American imperialism and rocked by domestic turmoil. How, then, did it become an emerging world power by the early 20th century? Why did Japan’s transformations during the late 19th and early 20th centuries lead to the total war of the 1930s and 1940s, and what factors explain its postwar economic growth and renewed global importance? 

Origins of the American Citizen
History 130
cross-listed: american studies, human rights
The United States is often portrayed as emerging triumphantly in 1776 to offer inclusive citizenship and a transcendent, tolerant, “American” identity to all its indigenous and immigrant residents. Yet the reality of American history belies this myth. This course focuses on six moments that definitively challenged and shaped conceptions of “American identity”: the early colonial period, the Constitutional Con­vention, the Cherokee Removal, the era of internal slave trade and the “Market Revolution,” the Mexican-American War, and Reconstruction. 

The Atlantic World in the Early Modern Period
History 133
cross-listed: american studies
This course provides students with a foundational knowledge of the Atlantic world during one of the most dynamic and fascinating periods in human history. The early modern period roughly encompasses the 15th through the 18th centuries; it was an age of exploration, which challenged the foundations of human knowledge, and an age of destruction of indigenous peoples and cultures via religion, germs, and steel. The course considers the impact of this time in Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

Imperial Chinese History
History 135
cross-listed: asian studies
An introduction to the origins and transformations of the Chinese imperial order from the Neolithic period to the final decades of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). Among the topics explored are the founding and transformations of the imperial state, the emergence of the literati class, and late imperial period rural peasant society. The course considers the fluid and complex relations between Chinese states and their Central Asian neighbors, and assesses the impact of Buddhism on China’s Confucian and Taoist philosophical traditions.

The Mediterranean World
History 138
cross-listed: italian studies, lais
A historical journey to the Mediterranean world of the 16th and 17th centuries using the scholarship of Fernand Braudel as a vehicle. The class considers geography, demography, climate, and econo­mies; next, the formation of social structures; and last, politics, religion, and culture.

City Cultures
History 139
cross-listed: eus
The built environment of cities is a powerful indicator of the social and cultural history of urban populations. This course looks comparatively at five cities in the United States and Western and Eastern Europe—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Paris, and Vilna—considering a variety of physical structures and spaces from the industrial and postindustrial eras. Students examine features of the urban landscape and read these sites for what they reveal about urban life across time.

Introduction to Russian Civilization
History 140
cross-listed: medieval studies, res
An examination of the origins and evolution of Russian civilization from the founding of the first Eastern Slavic state through the 18th century, when Russia began to modernize by borrowing from Western culture. Among the topics considered are the ethnogeny of early Russians, the development of state and legal institutions, the relationship between kinship and politics, the role of religion in public and private spheres, economic organization, social institutions, popular culture, and the impact of the outside world upon Russian society.

20th-Century Germany and the Unification of Europe
History 141
cross-listed: german studies, gis, human rights
This course explores Germany’s pivotal place in the ideological divisions, political catastrophes, and theoretical, social, and scientific innovations of modern Europe. A guiding theme is the paradox that even as Germany is perhaps the most “modern” of European states, it has been haunted since its inception by its past. Topics include the impact of World War I, the political experiment of Weimar democracy, the Holocaust, the student protests of 1968, and the creation of a new German and European identity after 1989.

Britain since 1707
History 142
cross-listed: gis, victorian studies
This survey course examines 300 years of British history, asking how a small island off continental Europe spread its influence so successfully around the globe. Bringing together political, diplomatic, economic, social, and cultural history, and fully integrating England, Scotland, Wales, and the Irish experience, the class explores developments such as the growth of democracy, imperialism and decolonization, the two world wars, the expanding role of the state, and the reach of institutions such as the BBC.

American Revolution
History 149
cross-listed: american studies
Our founding was radical, virtually unimaginable, and, ultimately, what made us American. This course focuses on the Revolution—the events leading to the war, the war itself, and the articles constructed in its aftermath. Was our separation from Britain inevitable? How could our founders reconcile their cries for freedom on a nation built by slavery? What were the vices inherent in mankind against which our Constitution was intended to guard?

Under a Western Sky: The American West in Film, Fact, and History
History 150
cross-listed: american studies, film and electronic arts
An in-depth examination of one of the richest of American film genres, the Western. The films—which include such John Ford classics as Stagecoach and The Searchers, among others­—are studied from a number of perspectives, as characteristic examples of popular narrative cinema and as attempts to understand the complex dynamic of America’s westward expansion in the 19th century, the actual history of which provides a background for the screenings.

Diaspora and Homeland
History 153 / Classics 157
cross-listed: africana studies, human rights, jewish studies
The concept of diaspora has gained widespread popularity as a way of thinking about group identity and group relationship to place. In this era of increasing globalization, more individuals than ever are emigrating to distant shores; as a result, “homeland” has taken on multiple complex meanings in the imaginations and lived experience of migrant populations. Students read recent theoretical works on diaspora and examine case studies of diasporic populations from ancient times to the present.

The History of Technology and Economics in the Modern Period
History 161
cross-listed: eus, gis, sts
The course considers how a separate domain of technology first came to be defined, in theory and practice, during the 18th century, and addresses how institutional forces such as law, academia, business, and government came to define and influence technological change and scientific research during the industrial revolution. Case studies ranging from the bicycle to the birth control pill help students generate “internal” accounts of the development of technology and science in conjunction with “external” accounts of the historical context of technologies. 

Hooke’s Micrographia
History 164
A monument of natural philosophy and scientific illustration, Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1665) was the first laboratory manual in microscopy. Hooke intended the work to be a manifesto of experimental method and faith in progress. His Royal Society of London colleagues also hoped Hooke’s observations would lend credence to atomism, a notorious ancient philosophy that was being rehabilitated in the 17th century. Students investigate Hooke’s life and work, as well as the links between science and society during the Scientific Revolution.

The Cold War
History 190
cross-listed: gis, human rights, res
Like two scorpions, the Soviet Union and the United States warily circled each other in a deadly dance that lasted more than half a century. In a nuclear age, any misstep threatened to be fatal—not only to the antagonists, but possibly to the entire human community. What caused this ­hostile confrontation to emerge from the World War II alliance? This course reconsiders the Cold War by simultaneously weighing both the American and Soviet perspectives on events as they unfolded.

Topics in Modern European History, 1789–2000
History 192
cross-listed: gis
This course employs methodologies and historiographies ranging from gender and demographic history to diplomatic and military history. It offers both an in-depth presentation of key aspects of modernity and a survey of ­contemporary historiography. Among the key issues discussed are the relation of the Industrial Revolution to the creation of new institutions of invention and patent, the role of institutional struture in diplomacy, and the effect of new mass media on citizenship.

Alexander the Great
History 201
cross-listed: classical studies
Alexander the Great changed the world more completely than any other human being, but did he change it for the better? How should Alexander himself be understood—as a tyrant of Hitlerian proportions, as a philosopher-king seeking to save the Greek world from self-destruction, or as a deluded madman? Such questions remain very much unresolved among modern historians. This course undertakes a thorough reading in the ancient sources concerning Alexander and examines as much primary evidence as can be gathered.

Frederick Douglass and His World: On Page and Screen
History 2013
cross-listed: american studies
Few figures loom larger in 19th-century America than Frederick Douglass, the former slave turned abolitionist and editor whose eloquence and moral passion ignited a generation. This course takes a close look at Douglass’s career and examines how his life has been treated by historians, biographers, and filmmakers. Students read from a wide selection of Douglass’s writings and at least two biographical treatments, and study a number of documentary films. 

History of New York City
History 2014
cross-listed: american studies, eus
A history of New York City from its founding as a Dutch colony to the present postindustrial, post-9/11 era. Emphasis is on the 19th and 20th centuries, when the city was transformed by immigration and rose to prominence as a global economic and cultural capital. Topics include the development of public spaces and skyscrapers; the city’s evolving population; and various, often controversial, solutions proposed to the problems of a modern metropolis.

Wars of Religion
History 2035
cross-listed: gss, human rights
Religion and revolution have formed an unholy alliance at several distinct moments in history. The 16th and 17th centuries were a time in which religious revolution and new ways of ordering spiritual life exploded in a fashion that no one could have anticipated. This course traces the personal stories of real people during this period through Inquisition records, diaries and conversion tales, early pamphlets, and accounts of uprisings.

The Boundaries of Fiction: 19th-Century European Historical Narratives
History 2038
cross-listed: literature
The historical narrative and the historical novel developed interdependently during the 19th century. Narrative historians appropriated the techniques of novelists, while historical novelists made new claims to truthfulness by grounding their fictions in historical fact. This course explores the porous frontier between the ­century’s historiography and realist fiction, comparing classic historical narratives by Carlyle, Tocqueville, Leopold von Ranke, and Marx to fictional narratives by Balzac, Georg Büchner, and George Eliot. 

Early Middle Ages
History 2110
cross-listed: classical studies, medieval studies
A survey of seven centuries, from the Germanic invasions and dissolution of the Roman Empire to the Viking invasions and dissolution of the Carolingian Empire. Topics include early Chris­tianity, “barbarians,” the Byzantine Empire, Islam, monasticism, and the myth and reality of Charlemagne. Readings include Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, and selections from Ammianus Marcellinus and Gregory of Tours.

The Invention of Politics
History 2112
cross-listed: human rights
Individuals and groups spoke, wrote, and fought to make their claims to public power in the period between 1500 and 1800 in ways that forced a reimagining of political relationships. The greatest institutions in place, particularly monarchies and the papacy, used their words, documents, symbols, and rituals to maintain their legitimacy in the face of resistance. The tension among groups created new political vocabularies that we have claimed by virtue of historical ownership or explicitly rejected.

The Arab-Israel Conflict
History 2122
cross-listed: human rights, jewish studies, mes 
This course provides students with an understanding of this conflict from its inception to the present. Among the themes discussed are how the Jewish national movement that began in the late 19th century and the Arab national movement that arose to contest Ottoman and European rule of Arab peoples led to the emergence of the State of Israel and the Palestinian refugees in 1948. The course examines how the political character of the conflict has changed over the decades.

Immigration and American Society: Colonial Times to the 1960s
History 213 / Sociology 213
See Sociology 213 for a full course description.

Comparative Atlantic Societies
History 2134
Slave or indentured labor underpinned the early modern Atlantic world. Beginning in the early 16th century, millions of enslaved Africans and indigenous Americans came to or moved around the Americas, creating a wide variety of zones of interaction that became places of contested and changing cultural practice. This course focuses on the African and indigenous Atlantics, and considers the comparative development of slavery, the methods of resistance, and the processes of emancipation and national formations at the end of the 18th century. 

Perpetual Peace: War, Pacifism, and Utopia in German History
History 2138
Immanuel Kant began his famous essay “Perpetual Peace” by noting that for the cynic the topic of his essay could only apply to a graveyard. Yet he proposes that through a better constitution of human institutions a realistic alternative, and a real peace, could be developed. Can it? In this course, students examine the dialectic of war and peace in Germany, and later the European Union, from the Thirty Years War to the present.

Atlantic North America, 1492–1765
History 2139
cross-listed: american studies, french studies, lais
Beginning with the “Columbian Exchange” and oceanic revolution of 1492, this course traces contact between Indians, Africans, and Europeans from initial encounter through the enmeshed global Atlantic of the 18th century. What motivated migrations across the Atlantic in both directions? How did imperial aspirations shape the nature of encounters (both voluntary and forced) in North America? What is at stake in how we construct particular visions of colonial American history? Intellectual, social, and cultural trends in various colonies are analyzed.

Immigration in Contemporary American Society
History 214 / Sociology 214
See Sociology 214 for a full course description.

Zionism and Jewish Nationalism
History 2141
cross-listed: human rights, jewish studies, res
This course explores the historical context for Zionism and other Jewish national movements, with a focus on European movements. Also considered are the answers proposed by each movement to questions such as: What is the most effective means of securing the rights of Jews as a stateless minority? How should Jews relate to the other groups among whom they live? Do Jews need a territory of their own?

Confucianism: Humanity, Rites, and Rights
History 229
cross-listed: asian studies, gss, human rights, philosophy, religion
This course explores the transformations of Confucian philosophy, social ethics, and political thought, from its ancient origins through the present, focusing on five key moments of change. Close readings in seminal texts provide a foundation in the earliest Confucian ideas of benevolence, rites, and righteousness. The course also considers how Confucian thought shaped Western ideas of rights; how Confucian concepts of humanity, relational ethics, and social responsibility offer alternatives to Euro-American rights discourse; and the contemporary Confucian revival. 

Shanghai and Hong Kong: China’s Global Cities
History 2302
cross-listed: asian studies, gis
Shanghai and Hong Kong are cities with long cosmopolitan pasts. This course explores the history of their current economic, social, and cultural dynamism, and in doing so probes the historical roots of globalization. It analyzes how 19th- and early 20th-century colonialism and semicolonialism both drove and conditioned, in somewhat different ways, the development of these two cities.

Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Modern China
History 2306
cross-listed: asian studies, gis, gss
The point of departure for this course is the ­traditional areas of focus for scholars of gender and sexuality in China: footbinding, the cloistering of women, and the masculinization of public space; the transformations of Confucian age-sex hierarchies within the family; the women’s rights movements of the early 20th century; and the Communist Revolution’s ambivalent legacy for women in the People’s Republic of China. 

The American Dream
History 2307
cross-listed: american studies
“But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be ­better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.” These words from James Truslow Adams summarize the optimism and sense of exceptionalism that have defined much of Ameri­can experience. This course considers the various articulations of the Dream and the ideological and structural supports for it, and how these have changed over time. 

China’s Environment in Historical Perspective
History 2308
cross-listed: asian studies, eus, gis
The fate of the global environment arguably depends on how China’s environmental crisis develops over the next half century. This course analyzes the historical roots of China’s current environmental condition and confronts the challenges posed to current efforts at environmental protection. In addition to regular papers, the class works on a group project to formulate a comprehensive environmental policy for China during the coming decade.

From Classicism to Modernism: Music, Politics, and Society in the Long” 19th Century
History 2313
cross-listed: victorian studies
Music is not written in a vacuum; it is both a “mirror and a prophecy” for its time. This course examines European music in the “long 19th century,” from the French revolution to the eve of World War I. By using individual case studies—e.g., Mozart’s Don Giovanni; Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring—students explore the political, commercial, philosophical, material, and circumstantial influences surrounding each composition, and the impact of these works on their own times and ours.

Precolonial and Colonial Africa
History 2318
cross-listed: africana studies, anthropology, gis
An overview of the history of sub-Saharan Africa during the precolonial and colonial periods, with an emphasis on the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some major themes are the relationship between Africa’s linkages to the world and local historical dynamics on the continent; slavery, empire, and economic transformations; and the stakes of conceptualizing African history in the present. Students review case studies from across the sub-Saharan African continent, drawing upon secondary historical literature, primary sources, novels, and visual arts.

Global Victorians
History 2319
cross-listed: victorian studies
They went everywhere and did everything. Long before “globalization,” the Victorians imagined the world universally. In their voyages of discovery they set out to achieve mastery of others and themselves, as well as attempting to map and understand the natural world around them. The course focuses on this project of empire, both from within and without, using texts on exploration and discovery. Authors studied may include Charlotte Bronté, Joseph Conrad, Sir Richard F. Burton, Rudyard Kipling, Anna Leonowens, and Winston Churchill.

Native Peoples of America
History 2356
cross-listed: american studies, human rights, sre
An overview of the history created by and between Native peoples, Europeans, and Africans, from the initial colonial exchanges of the 15th century up through the 20th century. Students focus on primary sources from the Northeast, South­west, and Southeast and the ways in which those sources have been manipulated over time. The changing cultural and political self-understanding of Native peoples is examined in conjunction with the appropriation of their culture and agency by both the federal government and scholarship.

Greek Religion: Magic, Mysteries, and Cults
History 2361
cross-listed: classical studies, religion
This course examines the ways in which polytheism was practiced and conceptualized by the ancient Greeks from the Mycenaean period into the Hellenistic era. It emphasizes the ritual aspects of Greek polytheism through the analysis of religious institutions, beliefs, and rites in their wider sociocultural contexts. Students explore the literary expressions of Greek religion and the ways in which religious beliefs and practices profoundly affected the development of Greek culture and history.

The Sixties
History 237
cross-listed: american studies, eus, human rights
This course examines the irony of increasing political dissent and violence in an era of relative prosperity. It touches on such topics as civil rights, media and politics, the Cuban missile crisis, popular culture, and the feminist movement. It takes an in-depth look at John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon, and at the most disruptive crisis of the post–World War II years, the war in Vietnam.

20th-Century Russia: From Communism to Nationalism
History 242
cross-listed: human rights, res
In its search for an elusive balance between modernity and tradition, Russian society has experienced many radical transformations, which are the subject of this introductory survey. In addition to a discussion and analysis of the main internal and external political developments in the region, the course examines the Soviet command economy; the construction of national identity, ethnic relations, and nationalism; family, gender relations, and sexuality; and the arts. Materials include scholarly texts, original documents, works of fiction, and films.

Film, Culture, and Politics in the Depression Era
History 247
cross-listed: american studies
As the U.S. economy recently spiraled out of control, the Great Crash of 1929 and the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt suddenly took on new relevance. As Hollywood provided Americans with entertainment and escape, Roosevelt and his New Deal also employed mass media to manage the public mood. This course examines how the New Deal, in its manipulation of symbols, differed from other national responses to these crises. Among the topics considered are the dangers of domestic fascism, the rise of the ­welfare state, and the Dust Bowl phenomenon.

Joyce’s Ulysses, Modernity, and Nationalism
History 2551
cross-listed: ics, sts, victorian studies
Although it concerns only one day in 1904, each chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses is written in a radically different style. This course complements Joyce’s stylistic innovation by using ­multifarious contemporary documents and ­historical texts to unfold the historical context and resonance of each of Joyce’s chapters. Among the key issues addressed are the funtion of historical and mythical time in everyday life and the effect of politics and mass media on personal experience. 

European Intellectual History since 1860: Central Debates of the Modern Period
History 261
This course outlines the principle transformations in the modern perception of society and nature within a political, cultural, and institutional framework. It considers the suppositions and fault lines on which 20th-century thought developed, using as its central theme “great debates” of the modern period, among them the critique of positivism at the turn of the century, the conflict of psychoanalysis and historicism, and the critique of technocracy and systems theory in the postwar period. 

Capitalism and Slavery
History 2631
cross-listed: american studies, human rights
Scholars have argued that there is an intimate relationship between the contemporary wealth of the developed world and the money generated through 400 years of slavery in the Americas. Is there something essential that links capitalism, even liberal democratic capitalism, to slavery? This course examines the development of this linkage, focusing on North America and the Caribbean from the early 17th century through the staggered emancipations of the 19th century. Contemporary issues (e.g., reparations, the “duty” of the Americas to Africa) are also considered.

The Holocaust, 1933–1945
History 2701
cross-listed: german studies, human rights, jewish studies, sts
This course examines modern anti-Semitic movements and the aftermath of World War I; Nazi rule and the experience of German Jews from 1933 to 1938; the institution of ghettos and the cultural and political activities of their Jewish populations; the turn to mass murder and its implementation in the extermination camps; and the liberation and its immediate aftermath. Special attention is paid to the question of what constitutes resistance or collaboration in a situation of total war and genocide.

Liberty, National Rights, Human Rights
History 2702
cross-listed: gis
Both the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the successor conventions that ultimately formed the International Bill of Human Rights were created in reaction to the problems of genocide and mass population transfers during World War II. Topics include the creation of national rights from the treaty of Westphalia through the British, American, and French Revolutions, the relation of these rights to colonial administrations, and the postwar institutions of human rights, among others.

American Environmental History I
History 280A
cross-listed: american studies, eus
Since the Old World first encountered the New, a battle has raged over what this New World might become. For some, it meant moral and spiritual rejuvenation. For most, it meant an opportunity to transform material circumstances. At no time have those two visions been compatible. This course examines attempts to fashion a scientific or aesthetic rationale for the use and abuse of natural resources, to subdue or preserve the wild­erness, and to understand the relationship between humans and nature.

American Environmental History II
History 280B
cross-listed: american studies, eus, social policy
This course investigates the history of Americans’ interaction with their environment from roughly 1890 to the present. It considers how the role of the federal government has changed from the “conservation” to the “environmental” eras, why the Dust Bowl occurred, how chemical warfare changed the life span of bugs, whether wilderness should be central to the environmental movement, and other topics that address how we live in the world. 

The History of International Institutions
History 2812
cross-listed: political studies
This course traces the history of international institutions from the Concert of Europe to the World Trade Organization. Topics include the factors that led to the demise of the League of Nations and the rise of the United Nations; the Dumbarton Oaks, Yalta, and San Francisco Conferences; the rise and consequence of the international financial institutions created at Bretton Woods; and the major successes and failures of these institutions over the last 200 years.

FDR and the Birth of the Modern Presidency
History 2832
cross-listed: american studies
This course examines Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s response to the global crisis of 1933 to 1945 with a view toward gaining a greater understanding of how his policies transformed America, the world, and the office of the U.S. presidency during these critical years. Also addressed are the long-term consequences of his policies and the ways they continue to fashion the world we live in today.

Environmental Diplomacy
History 302
cross-listed: gis
Diplomatic historians have long looked at territorial disputes, imperial ambitions, and dynastic competition as causes for war. They have generally ignored the environment as a factor in international relations. Yet, future wars may well be fought over pollution, scarce resource destruction, and overpopulation. This course invites students to look at peoples, events, and issues in which the environment has played a central role, and affords them an opportunity for research and writing that prepares them for their Senior Projects.

Political Ritual in the Modern World
History 3103
cross-listed: anthropology, asian studies, gis, human rights
Bastille Day, the U.S. presidential inauguration, and rallies at Nuremberg and Tiananmen Square: political ritual has been central to nation-building, colonialism, and political movements over the last three centuries. This course uses a global, comparative perspective to analyze the modern history of political ritual. Among the topics covered are state ritual and the performance of power, the relationship between ritual and citizenship in the modern nation-state, and the ritualization of politics in social and political movements.

Fugitives, Exile, Extradition
History 3107
cross-listed: human rights
This course studies the picaresque case histories of runaway wives, fugitive slaves, dissident pamphleteers, anti-imperial revolutionaries, and others confronting extradition by foreign governments or sovereigns. It covers the period from the rise of European states (when rulers effectively kidnapped their subjects from foreign territories) to the birth of the modern extradition system. Prerequisite: History 102, Political Studies 104, or Sociology 242.

Jewish Women: Gender Roles and Cultural Change
History 3108
cross-listed: gss
This course draws on historical and memoir literature to examine the lives of Jewish women and men and their changing social, economic, and religious lives across the medieval and modern periods. It considers the status of women in Jewish law and discusses the forms of women’s religious expression, the differing impact of enlightenment and secularization on women in Western and Eastern Europe, the role of women in Zionist and labor movements, and other related issues.

Plague!
History 3112
cross-listed: gis, human rights, medieval studies
The cry “Plague!” has struck fear among people around the world, from antiquity to the present. What is plague? How has it changed history? Starting with Camus’s metaphorical evocation of plague in a modern North African city, this Upper College seminar examines the historical impact of plague on society. It focuses on bubonic plague, which was epidemic throughout the Mediterranean and European worlds for 400 years, and which remains a risk in many parts of the world.

The High Middle Ages
History 3117
cross-listed: french studies, medieval studies
The High Middle Ages is an era of cultural flowering, population growth, and political consolidation, occurring between the two cataclysms of Viking invasions and bubonic plague. Students read modern analyses of medieval inventions, heretics in Southern France, the plague, and women’s work. Also examined are medieval texts—anticlerical stories, epic poetry, and political diatribes—that offer a contemporary perspective on values and issues.

Jewish Power and Politics
History 3131
cross-listed: jewish studies, political studies, res
This course examines modern Jewish political movements, such as Zionism and Diaspora Nationalism, as well as attitudes toward power and powerlessness in Jewish culture. Students scrutinize the answers proposed by each movement to the problems of anti-Semitism and assimilation, and also address the question: Does combating powerlessness require Jews to have a state of their own? The course focuses on European movements and thinkers, but also considers how these ideas played out in the United States and Israel.

History of U.S. Urban Schooling
History 3132
cross-listed: american studies, eus, human rights
This course reviews the history of urban schooling within the context of major social developments from the early national period to the 21st century: industrialization, immigration, unionization, suburbanization, and the woman’s suffrage and civil rights movements, among them. The first section traces the development of urban schools through the first half of the 20th century; the second focuses on more contemporary problems of school reform.

Biography and U.S. History
History 3135
cross-listed: american studies, eus, human rights
Students survey the ways in which life stories can convey multiple and often opposing understandings of the past. Biographies can reinforce “Great Man” understandings of history, recover the role of ordinary people, confirm the idea of individual agency, highlight the power of context in framing individual decision making, precisely locate and define extraordinary actions and actors, render history in human terms, and suggest rightly or wrongly a coherence to the past. This course serves as a Major Conference.

The City and Modernity in Central Europe: Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest
History 3141
cross-listed: eus, sts
Focusing principally on the four cities listed above, this course keys on the metropolis as a means to investigate the central European experience of modernity. Some topics covered are the cultural reaction to mechanization and bureaucratization of modern urban life, the metropolis as a new political arena to contest traditional political and social roles, and new forms of communication, association, and political action in the city. Period films and the writings of figures such as Benjamin, Freud, Kafka, and Musil are examined. 

Women, Gender, and Political Media
History 3144
cross-listed: gss, human rights
This course explores the long history of women’s participation in political media. By focusing on how women political leaders, writers, journalists, artists, and audiences shaped the media, and by studying the complex role women played and were assigned in public and political life, the course seeks to move beyond familiar, binarized debates about social goals, resources, and policies, establishing clear links between the history of media and the histories of women’s and human rights.

Jamestown
History 3145
cross-listed: american studies
In this course students first learn various methodologies and approaches used in writing early American history, and then apply these strategies in their own research papers. The first half of the course examines current historiographical approaches to the topic of the English settlement of Jamestown; the second half provides an intensive investigation of primary source materials, which form the core of the research papers that students generate at the end of the semester.

Environmental History of the Middle East and Africa
History 3146
cross-listed: africana studies, eus, human rights
This course explores the particular and general questions that shape the portrayal of the environment in each regional historiography, such as: How has agriculture evolved and what changes in agricultural practice have proved most transformative? What role has the “natural” environment played in the development of nationalism and political conflict? How does the urban, “built” environment interact with rural and agricultural spaces?

Education and Social Policy in the United States, 1954–2002
History 315
cross-listed: social policy, sociology
This seminar explores the history of education and social policy in the United States from Brown v. Board of Education (1954) to passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (2002). It examines the roles of institutions (notably, research and advocacy organizations, think tanks, and philanthropic foundations), social movements and political parties, the mass media, and individual men and women in the shaping of public policy.

Anti-Semitism: A Comprehensive Examination 
History 320
cross-listed: human rights
This course considers one of the oldest and most persistent forms of hatred, asking, among other questions: How is anti-Semitism part of the family of bigotries, prejudice, and discrimination, and how is it unique? How has it manifested itself in different eras, regions, political systems, economies, and cultures? Why does it exist in some countries that do not even have Jews? How can it be combated?

A Sociological Classic: Middletown and America  
History 322 / Sociology 322
See Sociology 322 for a full course description.

Technocracy, Technology, and Social Control in Nazi Germany, the DDR, and the BRD
History 3234
cross-listed: gis, human rights, sts 
This research course addresses the coercive and violent powers of the modern state as they were refined through technologies and techniques in National Socialist Germany, and then alternately condemned and utilized in the two German nations of the (East) German Demo­cratic Republic (DDR) and the (West) German Federal Republic (BRD). Topics range from the development of new techniques of propaganda to the manipulation of social technologies such as identification papers, the census, racial pseudoscience, and, most horrifically, the concentration camp system. 

Making Space in the Colonial and Postcolonial World
History 3237
cross-listed: africana studies
anthropology, eus, gis, human rights 
Over the past two centuries, rapid urbanization, postcolonial development projects, and dramatic shifts in agriculture have radically transformed the spaces we now consider the postcolonial world. In addition to a rigorous engagement with historical, political, and anthropological case studies, which focus primarily on the Middle East and Africa, this course critically examines a body of theory associated with the production of space.

Racialization and American Immigration Policy, 1870–1930
History 324
For a long period, immigration to the United States and other Western countries was more or less unrestricted (and in some cases strongly encouraged). But around the turn of the 20th century the “open door policy” ended. This course considers the changing American context within which these changes in policy came about. Though it focuses primarily on the United States, comparisons to developments in immigration restriction made by other countries is also considered.

The Politics of History
History 340
What are the origins of history as a modern discipline? How have particular modes of history developed in relation to nationalism, imperialism, and the emergence of the modern state? How have modern historical techniques served to produce ideology, and how have these same techniques provided tools for challenging different forms of domination and the ideologies that help to perpetuate them? This course addresses these questions through theoretical readings, including works by Foucault, LaCapra, Scott, White, and theorists active in the subaltern studies movement.

Russian Intellectual History
History 365
cross-listed: res
Following a brief introduction dealing with the modernization of Russia and the origin of Russian secular thought and the intelligentsia, this seminar focuses on the major trends and personalities in 19th-century Russian secular thought. Topics include continuity and change in Russian culture, debates between Western­izers and Slavophiles, revolutionary populism, and socialism. Readings include works by Chaadayev, Chernyshevsky, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Lenin, and Tolstoy, and contemporary studies of the Russian intellectual tradition.