Catalogue

Historical Studies

historicalstudies.bard.edu

Faculty

Tabetha Ewing (director), Richard Aldous, Myra Young Armstead, Leon Botstein, Christian Ayne Crouch, Robert J. Culp, Ibrahim Elhoudaiby, Jeanette Estruth, Cecile E. Kuznitz, Sean McMeekin, Gregory B. Moynahan, Joel Perlmann, Miles Rodríguez, Drew Thompson, Wendy Urban-Mead (MAT), Rupali Warke 

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 (sociology, anthropology, economics, philosophy) and forms of expression (art, film, drama, literature, architecture). The program also introduces a variety of methodological perspectives used in historical research and 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 paper responding to an assigned reading. 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. These should include one course focused on issues of historiography. As part of the preparation for their Senior Project, Upper College students should take two 300-level seminars; one of these should be a Major Conference taken in the junior year that culminates in a substantial research project.

Recent Senior Projects

• “Black Drugs: Narcotic Temperance and Moral Productivity in Egypt, 1882–1920”
• “Graft and Slime in New York City: Exploring the Impact of Organized Crime on the Nullification of the 18th Amendment” 
• “NATO Expansion and Ukraine Crisis”
• “Sovereignty and State Structure in South Africa, 1908–1997”

Courses

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

The following descriptions represent a sampling of courses from the past four years.

Revolution
History 1001
The class 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, protests by students and intellectuals that rocked Europe in 1968, and the “velvet revolutions” and near revolutions that transformed state socialism in 1989.

Scientific Literature
History 109
CROSS-LISTED: EXPERIMENTAL HUMANITIES, STS
Scandalous suppositions about God, invisible murderers, bad puns, cliffhangers, deadpan comedy, breathtaking lyricism—these are perhaps not the first elements that come to mind when we think about scientific writing. Yet the history of science is filled with examples of spectacular rhetoric. This course considers scientific texts that have particular literary merit. The class reads and discusses each text closely and begins to develop a sense of the history of concepts like truth and evidence. Readings from Aristotle, Newton, Faraday, Darwin, Du Bois, Watson and Crick, and more.

The Culture of Yiddish
History 115
CROSS-LISTED: JEWISH STUDIES, RES
Yiddish was the primary language of European Jewry and its emigrant communities for nearly 1,000 years. This course explores the Yiddish language and literature as well as the role of Yiddish in Jewish life. Topics include the sociolinguistic basis of Jewish languages; medieval popular literature for a primarily female audience; the role of Yiddish in the spread of Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment); attempts to formulate a secular Jewish identity around the Yiddish language; and contemporary Hasidic (ultra-Orthodox) culture. Assignments in English translation.

Inclusion at Bard
History 117
DESIGNATED: ELAS COURSE
Colleges have clearly served as stepping-stones, remediating against racial inequalities by providing pathways toward upward mobility for Blacks and other minorities. At the same time, recent disclosures by Brown and Georgetown Universities of, respectively, a founder’s fortune made in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the sale of slaves to pay off antebellum debts exemplify the role played by institutions of higher learning in reproducing racial and other social hierarchies. This course explores how these contradictory dynamics have manifested themselves at Bard by reviewing the College’s evolving admission policies and the experiences of alumni/ae of color.

War and Peace: International History
History 120
This survey of the international system since the outbreak of war in 1914 pays particular attention to the three great conflicts of the 20th century—World War I, World War II, and the Cold War—and the shifting balance of power in Europe and Asia. Students gain an understanding of the broad sweep of international history and the forces, such as imperialism, fascism, communism, liberal capitalism, science, and globalism, that have disturbed the peace and shaped the world order. 

20th-Century Britain
History 122
A survey of Britain in the 20th and early 21st centuries, starting with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, when Britain was the most powerful country in the world, and moving chronologically through the century. Particular emphasis is given to the multilayered British experience of global conflicts (World Wars I and II, the Cold War, the “War on Terror”) and relationships with the empire, as well as the creation of the welfare state and a diverse multicultural society.

The Widow at Montgomery Place in the 19th Century
History 123
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES
DESIGNATED: ELAS COURSE
In 1802, Janet Montgomery began to convert her 380-acre riverfront property from a “wilderness” into a “pleasure ground.” This transformation reflected prevailing ideas about the ideal aesthetic relationship between humans and nature as well as emerging notions regarding scientific agriculture. Development of the property also mirrored contemporary social and cultural conventions, as the estate was populated by indentured servants, tenants, slaves, free workers, and elites. This course approaches Montgomery Place as a laboratory for understanding social hierarchies, cultural practices, and evolving visions of nation and “place.”

Introduction to Modern Japanese History
History 127
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES, GIS, GSS
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?

Urban American History
History 129
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, ARCHITECTURE, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
An exploration of the history of the urban American experience. The course asks: What makes a city? How have people built cities, inhabited them, and lived urban lives? What drives urban development and growth? What is the role of cities within capitalism and within government? The class looks at cities as sets of relationships, as well as a distinct spatial form, and uses cities as a lens to research themes such as labor and markets, wealth and inequality, ethnic identity and race, and gender and the environment. 

The Ottomans and the Last Islamic Empire
History 134
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, MES
After World War I, the Ottoman Empire disappeared from the world scene. In its place arose numerous states, which today make up the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe. In these states, memory of the empire is alive and well; it is in relation to the Ottoman legacy that national identities were constructed and claims to national borders settled (or not). Topics: the empire’s origins, its Islamic and European identities, everyday life under the Ottomans, and the emergence of modern Turkey.

Imperial Chinese History
History 135
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES
China’s imperial state, sustained in one form or another for over two millennia, was arguably history’s longest continuous social and political order. This course explores the transformations of imperial China’s state, society, and culture from their initial emergence during the Zhou period (1027–221 BCE) through the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911, when a combination of imperialism and internal stresses destroyed the imperial system. Readings in philosophy, poetry, fiction, and memoir are supplemented with a rich array of visual sources.

Surveying Displacement and Migration in the United States
History 136
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, ARCHITECTURE, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS
An examination of the 20th-century American experience through the exercise of hands-on historical research methods. The course considers the following themes: labor and markets, wealth and inequality, ethnic identity and race, and gender and the environment. The tools of exploration include readings, discussions, music, journalism poetry, scholarly articles, digital content, and films. Upon successfully completing the course, students are able to employ the methods of historical practice to navigate present-day questions related to political and social issues affecting contemporary society. 

A Haunted Union: 20th-Century Germany and the Unification of Europe
History 141
CROSS-LISTED: GERMAN STUDIES, GSS
A history of the German-speaking lands from Napoleon’s dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 through the development of the German state in 1871, the cataclysmic initiation by this state of the two 20th-century World Wars, and the creation of the new political entity of the European Union. 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.

Britain since 1707
History 142
CROSS-LISTED: GIS
An examination of the complex history of Great Britain from its inception in 1707 to the multicultural society of today. Fully integrating the experience of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, as well as the British Empire, the class considers the evolution of a nation and its people, reading seminal texts and asking to what extent Britain and varieties of “Britishness” lived up to the aspiration to be “great and free . . . the envy of them all.”

European Diplomatic History
History 143
A survey of the major developments in European diplomatic history between the Treaty of Westphalia and the outbreak of World War I. Key themes: the changing nature of diplomacy and international order; the rise of the nation-state and standing armies; war finance and the bond market; and the French Revolutionary upheaval, the Industrial Revolution, and ideological responses to them (e.g., liberalism, nationalism, conservatism, socialism, and anarchism).

History of the Experiment
History 144
CROSS-LISTED: EXPERIMENTAL HUMANITIES, STS
The scientific method and the modern form of the scientific experiment are arguably the most powerful inventions of the modern period. Although dating back, in its modern form, to the 16th century, the concept of the experiment as an attempt to find underlying continuities in experience goes back to earliest recorded history. The class looks at different epochs’ definitions of experiment, focusing on the classical, medieval, and Renaissance eras to the present. Texts by Aristotle, Lucretius, da Vinci, Leibniz, Newton, Darwin, Curie, Tesla, Einstein, McClintock, others.

The Business of Drugs in America
History 145
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, POLITICS, STS
From coffee to cocaine, sugar to cannabis, tobacco to opiates, and alcohol to Adderall, drugs have historically been a major industry in the United States. This course examines the history of the buying and selling of substances that change the way the body acts or feels, asking, among other questions: How and why have people used drugs in the past? What makes something legal or illegal? What role does the federal government have in regulating them? What happens when substances are banned?

Latin America: Independence/Sovereignty/Revolution
History 152
CROSS-LISTED: EXPERIMENTAL HUMANITIES, STS
A historical survey of Latin America, one of the world’s most diverse regions, with a focus on the often traumatic transformations and transitions that many of its distinct nations and peoples have experienced in struggles for independence and sovereignty. The class examines the main issues and challenges of Latin America’s postcolonial period, including persistent inequality, regional and national integration and disintegration, and global and international relations.

Diaspora and Homeland
History 153
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, GIS, HUMAN RIGHTS, JEWISH STUDIES
DESIGNATED: ELAS AND HSI COURSE
The concept of diaspora, a deeply resonant way of thinking about group identity and its relationship to place, is a longstanding historical phenomenon. Homelands, in turn, have taken on meanings in the imaginations and lived experience of migrant populations, particularly when technological and transportation innovations facilitate links with native lands. Students read theoretical works and examine case studies of diasporic populations from ancient times to the present, including the longest-lived diasporic minority group, the Jewish people, and Black African-descended people since the transatlantic slave trade.

The Victorians
History 155
CROSS-LISTED: VICTORIAN STUDIES
cross-listed: victorian studies
Victorian Britain was the most powerful and self-confident nation on earth, but also a place, wrote Friedrich Engels, where many lived “in measureless filth and stench as if this race must really have reached the lowest stage of humanity.” By reading a variety of texts—novels, political essays, music, poetry, philosophy, political theory, and natural science—this course examines changing and often conflicting visions of life in the 19th century, and assesses a legacy that remains politically contested to this day. 

Modern France
History 159
CROSS-LISTED: FRENCH STUDIES
The French nation gave birth to itself in 1789 but would be reborn as demographic and economic changes, brought about through colonial relations, forced new ideas about France’s political identity. This survey of French politics, society, and economy in the 19th and 20th centuries—from the French and Haitian Revolutions to the fall of France in Indochina—also addresses how the rise of the French intellectual, reformulation of gender roles, and resistance in overseas territories somehow created one of the most strongly articulated modern identities in Europe.

Latin American Histories
History 160
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, GIS, HUMAN RIGHTS
There are nearly 60 million people of Latin American origin or descent in the United States. Yet there is no agreement, by members of this population or others, on how to define or speak of them in terms of common or diverse experiences or histories. The very names people use to describe themselves vary tremendously by place, time, and circumstance. This course considers how those of Latin American origin can be understood in terms of culture, race, ethnicity, nationality, and identity.

History of Technology and Economy: The Era of Hydrocarbon Economy
History 161
CROSS-LISTED: ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, STS
The course begins by examining how technology first came to be defined during the 18th century within such diverse activities as agriculture, time measurement, transport, architecture, and warfare. It then addresses how institutional forces such as law, academia, business, and government came to define and influence technological change during the industrial revolution; and concludes with recent approaches to the history of technology. Case studies include the bicycle, nuclear missile targeting, public health statistics, and the birth control pill. 

Technology, Labor, Capitalism
History 180
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, EXPERIMENTAL HUMANITIES, HUMAN RIGHTS, STS
Artificial intelligence and the knowledge economy, computation and credit, satellites and social media, philanthropy and factory flight, “doing what you love” and digital activism, climate change and corporate consolidation. This course explores changes in capitalism, technology, and labor in the 20th- and 21st-century United States. Students learn how ideas about work and technology have evolved over time, and how these dynamic ideas and evolving tools have shaped the present day

Jews in the Modern World
History 181
CROSS-LISTED: JEWISH STUDIES
In the modern period Jews faced unprecedented opportunities to integrate into the societies around them, as well as anti-Semitism on a previously unimaginable scale. In response to these changing conditions they reinvented Jewish culture and identity in radically new ways. This course surveys the history of the Jewish people from the expulsion from Spain to the establishment of the state of Israel. It examines such topics as acculturation and assimilation, Zionism, the Holocaust, and the growth of the American Jewish community.

Inventing Modernity: Peasant Commune, Renaissance, and Reformation in the German and Italian Worlds, 1291–1806
History 184
CROSS-LISTED: FRENCH STUDIES, GERMAN STUDIES, ITALIAN STUDIES
Using Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy as its starting point, this course examines the role of the drastic upheavals of the early modern period in defining the origins of such institutions as capitalism, political individuality, religious freedom, democracy, and the modern military. Also addressed is the historiography and politics ­surrounding the “invention” of the Renaissance in the late 19th century and Burckhardt’s relation to von Ranke, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.

The Making of the Modern Middle East
History 185
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, HUMAN RIGHTS, MES
An introduction to the major transformations of the Middle East from the late 18th century to the present. Topics include reform movements in the Ottoman Empire, European imperialism, nationalist movements (including the Arab-Israeli conflict), political Islam, military intervention, and the Arab Spring (and its aftermath). The course emphasizes the interactions between society, culture, and politics, with particular attention paid to such social and cultural aspects as gender, labor, popular culture, and forms of protest.

India before Western Imperialism: 1200 to 1750 CE
History 186
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES
An overview of South Asian history from 1200 to 1750 CE, the period during which most of the region came under the rule of Central Asian Muslim warriors and aristocrats. Students look at textual and audiovisual sources to understand how the multiregional cultural identities crystallized under different political dynasties through patronage of the arts, architecture, religion, and cultural exchange due to trade. Also explored is how the confluence of Indic and Perso-Arabic traditions was reflected in language, visual art, buildings, ideas of kingship, and religion. 

The Indian Ocean World: South Asia from a Transoceanic Perspective
History 187
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES, GIS
For centuries, the Indian Ocean has transmitted people across continents, thus serving as an important channel of circulation and exchange. The history of the Indian Ocean, therefore, is also the history of the people who traversed it. This course looks at the history of South Asia with a focus on the linkages of South Asia to East Africa, Southeast Asia, and West Asia. Students explore this peripatetic human history through pathbreaking secondary works and critical primary sources. 

The Age of Extremes: Modern European History since 1815 
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 structure in diplomacy, and the effect of new mass media on citizenship.

From the New Deal to the Green New Deal: Liberalism and Conservatism in the  United States
History 193
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, POLITICS
DESIGNATED: HSI COURSE
What are the policy trends that have forged the modern American experience? What political frameworks have mobilized coalitions, animated representatives, and changed governance in the 20th- and 21st-century United States? How do presidential administrations communicate and connect broad and sometimes divergent policy goals? Why does the United States have only two major political parties? What is the role of parties in articulating modern American liberalism and conservatism? This course explores major historical moments in, and relationships between, the diverse political traditions of the United States.

Living Black in America: Major Themes in African American History
History 195
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES
DESIGNATED: RJI COURSE
This course provides a foundation for understanding the African American experience in the past—and contemporary resonances of that past. Rather than a strictly chronological overview, the survey is thematically organized: each theme (e.g., the economics of Blackness, violence/surveillance/criminalization, representations of Blackness in art and literature, etc.) is approached through the preindustrial, industrial, and postindustrial eras, thus highlighting the way in which the race/class nexus is a central concern. While the themes can be viewed as discreet subjects, the ways in which they intersect are also addressed. 

Invention of Politics
History 196
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 arsenals of words, documents, symbols, and ritual to maintain their legitimacy in the face of subtle or uproarious resistance. The tension between or, more accurately, among groups created new political vocabularies to which we, in our present, have claimed historical ownership or explicitly rejected.

India under Colonial Rule
History 197
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES, GIS
After the demise of India’s great Mughal Empire in the 18th century, the British gained power, leading to 200 years of colonial rule over South Asia. This course introduces the modern history of South Asia between the years 1750 and 1947. Main themes include the political rise of the British East India Company, the influence of Western political thought on Indian society, Gandhi’s ideology of nonviolence, sociopolitical movements against caste inequality, and modernist women’s movements. 

James Bond’s World
History 2007
The character of James Bond has played a defining role in creating our understanding of what it means to be a spy and an Englishman. This course looks at the reality behind the fiction of one of Britain’s most glamorous and enduring exports, as well as the author who created him and the context of the postwar world. Background reading: Ian Fleming’s The Blofeld Trilogy and Simon Winder’s The Man Who Saved Britain.

Alexander the Great
History 201 / Classics 201
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, a philosopher-king seeking to save the Greek world from self-destruction, or a deluded madman? Such questions remain very much unresolved among modern historians. This course examines the ancient sources concerning Alexander and as much primary evidence as can be gathered.

History of New York City
History 2014
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
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.

Russia under the Romanovs
History 203
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, RES
A survey of Russian history during the reign of the Romanov dynasty from 1613 until the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917. Key themes include military history and imperial expansion, autocracy and its critics, Russia’s allegedly “belated” economic modernization, serfdom and land reform, the long-running argument over Russian identity between “Westernizers” and Slavophiles, and the origins and nature of Russian political radicalism.

Anti-Semitism/Racism/Liberalism
History 208
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS, JEWISH STUDIES, POLITICS
The class first looks at the ways racism and anti-Judaism shaped late 18th-century debates over the meaning of citizenship in both Europe and the United States, then delves into debates among those historically excluded from the legal protections promised by liberalism. Also considered is how various 20th-century writers, primarily Black and Jewish, responded to the question of whether the legacy of white and Christian supremacy could be overcome in the context of the liberal nation-state

Crusading for Justice: On Gender, Sexuality, Racial Violence, Media, and Rights
History 210
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, AFRICANA STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS, LAS
DESIGNATED: HSI COURSE
This course focuses on the activism of journalist Ida B. Wells, daughter of two American slaves. She campaigned against lynching in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, exposing it as state-sanctioned, extralegal violence against black men and women. She also challenged the legal double standards that erase the victimization of Black women and the sexual agency of white women. Her work reveals the matrix of more than a century of Black feminist thought, critical race theory, and civil and human rights activism. 

Latin Americans in the United States
History 2101
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, GIS, HUMAN RIGHTS, LAIS
DESIGNATED: IMIGRATION NIATIVE, 
This course examines the lives of people of Latin American descent in the United States, closely considering questions of race, ethnicity, nationality, and the roles of migration and intergenerational settlement in the formation of diverse identities. Themes include the meanings, identities, and ontologies of Latin American–origin peoples; the uses of multiple languages and concepts, including self-descriptions and external categorizations such as Latina, Latino, and Latinx; cultural appropriation versus appreciation; and maintenance of cultural continuity through colonization, migration, and settlement.

Soviet Russia
History 2118
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, POLITICS, RES
This course examines the Russian Revolution and Civil War; the new economic policy and succession struggle after Lenin; the major phases of Stalinism; the “Great Patriotic War” (WWII) and the onset of the Cold War; “soft repression” and the growth of the Soviet bureaucratic elite of cadres under Leonid Brezhnev; Alexei Kosygin’s reforms and efforts to improve Soviet economic performance; Soviet foreign policy; the economic crisis of the 1980s; and, ultimately, the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Arab-Israel Conflict
History 2122
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, HUMAN RIGHTS, JEWISH STUDIES, MES 
The intractability of the Israel-Arab conflict today is incomprehensible without a grasp of its evolution since the late 19th century. Themes discussed include the development of the Jewish national movement to settle Palestine (Zionism) and Arab (specifically Palestinian) nationalism; debates over “the right to the land”; the Balfour Declaration of 1917; the 1948 War, statehood, and refugees; the 1967 War and Israel’s control since then of conquered territories; Palestinian resistance movements; and the shifting landscape of solutions viewed as “possible.”

From Analog to Digital: Historical and Documentary Photography in Africa
and the Diaspora
History 2123
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS
Key themes include photography’s role in shaping historical knowledge and the representation of Africa and its peoples, the appropriation of image making into African creative practices and daily life, the politics of exhibition and archiving, and the ethics of seeing war and social justice. Students design a historical photography exhibition, and, over the course of the semester, they have the opportunity to interact with leading photography curators, photojournalists, and art photographers who have spent time in Africa.

Domesticity and Capital: Gender, Households, and Women’s Wealth in South Asia
History 2128
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES, GSS
An exploration of “capital” beyond the conventional materialist understanding of the term. Historically, women in South Asia have played an active role in politics and business enterprises and possessed personal wealth. This course historicizes households and domesticity, focusing on marriage, kinship, intimacy, and domestic slavery, to explore how these aspects shaped gender relations and wealth creation in South Asian history. Students engage with works of prominent scholars along with primary sources such as archival documents, religious texts, and chronicles.

Immigration in American Politics
History 213
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS, SOCIOLOGY
DESIGNATED: MIGRATION INITATIVE COURSE
Dreamers and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), illegal aliens, dangerous Muslims, fear for jobs, “populism” gone rampant. During and since the 2016 presidential election, immigrants and immigration policy have played a central role in American political debate (with many apparent parallels in Europe). This course tries to specify what is novel in the American case—and what is not so new. Class readings focus on historical accounts of the immigrant in American politics as well as emerging understandings of the present instance.

From Analog to Digital: Historical and Documentary Photography in Africa and the Diaspora
History 2123
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, ART HISTORY AND VISUAL CULTURE, HUMAN RIGHTS
Key themes include photography’s role in shaping historical knowledge and the representation of Africa and its peoples, the appropriation of image making into African creative practices and daily life, the politics of exhibition and archiving, and the ethics of seeing war and social justice. Students design a historical photography exhibition, and, over the course of the semester, they have the opportunity to interact with leading photography curators, photojournalists, and art photographers who have spent time in Africa.

Immigration in American Politics
History 213 
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS, SOCIOLGY
DESIGNATED: MIGRATION INITATIVE COURSE
Dreamers and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), illegal aliens, dangerous Muslims, fear for jobs, “populism” gone rampant. During and since the 2016 presidential election, immigrants and immigration policy have played a central role in American political debate (with many apparent parallels in Europe). This course tries to specify what is novel in the American case—and what is not so new. Class readings focus on historical accounts of the immigrant in American politics as well as emerging under- standings of the present instance.

Comparative Atlantic Slavery
History 2134
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS, LAIS
Forced labor (indentured and enslaved) underpinned the early modern Atlantic world and built the Global North. A wide variety of societies emerged from this crucible of contested and changing cultural practice. This course focuses on the African and Indigenous Atlantics as it considers the comparative development of early modern slavery, enslaved resistance, and late 18th-/early 19th-century processes of emancipation. Also discussed are the implications of how modern states write or remember these histories and the ways in which racial capitalism perpetuates early modern inequities.

Reason and Revolution: European Intellectual History to 1870
History 2136
CROSS-LISTED: STS
The course outlines some of the principal transformations in the modern understanding of society and nature within a political, cultural, and institutional framework. Particular attention is placed on the interrelation of science, theology, and philosophy that characterized the period (from Descartes and Leibniz to Mach and Nietzsche). Topics include skepticism, the interrelation of enlightenment and Romanticism, feminism, conservatism, utopian socialism, nationalism, and anarchism.

Jewish Women and Men: Gender Roles and Cultural Change
History 2137
CROSS-LISTED: GSS, JEWISH STUDIES
DESIGNATED: HSI COURSE
This course draws on both historical and memoir literature to examine the lives of Jewish women and men and their changing cultural, social, economic, and religious lives across the medieval and modern periods. Topics of discussion include issues relating to women and gender in Jewish law, women’s religious expression, marriage and family patterns, the differing impact of enlightenment and secularization on women in Western and Eastern Europe, the role of women in the Zionist movement, and gendered images of Jews in American popular culture.

China’s Last Emperors: Late Imperial Chinese History
History 2143
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES, GIS
Modern China is in many ways the product of its imperial past. The dynamic commercial economy, vibrant cities, rich intellectual culture, expansive territory, and rapidly growing population of the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynastic periods have provided resources that continue to shape Chinese life today. At the same time, the collapse of the imperial state caused by internal rebellion and foreign imperialism in the 19th century sparked a crisis that generated China’s modern revolutions. This course explores the complex dynamics and legacies of Ming and Qing China.

The Past and Present of Capitalism in the Middle East
History 219 
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, MES
Capitalism is not only a Western economic system but also a comprehensive mode of organizing society that is continuously adopted, modified, and subverted around the globe. This course explores the multiple, and often counterintuitive ways, in which capitalism became entrenched in the modern Middle East. Also discussed: common modern practices and the paradoxical place of the Middle East within the current global (capitalist) order, being at once a major exporter of oil and financial capital—and a major exporter of economic migrants and refugees.

Africans, Empire, and the Great War
History 2210
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, GIS
DESIGNATED: RJI COURSE
What made World War I a “world” war? Many factors contributed to the conflict’s designation, including the role of Africa, Africans, and members of the African diaspora. Some signed up in response to a call for volunteers, others were ruthlessly coerced, and many more became involved for reasons that fell somewhere in the middle. The course visits the Great War with an eye to unpack members of the African diaspora in the context of empire and white supremacy 

A History of the Modern Police
History 222
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, FRENCH STUDIES, GIS, HUMAN RIGHTS
The course investigates the invention and evolution of the police from the late 17th century to the present, focusing largely on France, Britain, and the United States. The class considers the development of the police as an expression of sovereign right and of citizens’ rights, from enforcer of the king’s will to public servant.

Radio Africa: Broadcasting History
History 2237
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, EXPERIMENTAL HUMANITIES, GIS, HUMAN RIGHTS
The radio was critical to Africa’s colonization and decolonization. While colonial authorities used radio to broadcast news and transmit governing strategies, local African communities sometimes appropriated the radio for political and entertain­ment purposes. This course uses developments in radio technology to explore histories of political activism, leisure, cultural production, and enter­tainment across sub-Saharan Africa from colonial to present times. In conjunction with the Human Rights Project’s radio initiative, students design a podcast on a topic of relevance to the course.

Russia, Turkey, and the First World War
History 224 
This course explores Tsarist Russia’s collapse during and after the First World War, culminating in a violent revolution and civil war. The class also considers the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of WWI before progressing to 1923, by which time the Bolsheviks had secured supremacy in most of the regions of the former Tsarist Empire, and Turkey had regrouped under Mustafa Kemal to win its war of independence. 

Contemporary Russia
History 2241
CROSS-LISTED: RES
After examining the dilemmas of reform in the 1980s and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the course traces the different paths of Russia and other successor states through the present day. Key themes: the command economy and efforts to liberalize it; the nature of the Soviet collapse and whether it was inevitable; the hyperinflation of the early 1990s and its consequences; the rise of the Mafia; the war(s) in Chechnya; the transition from Yeltsin to Putin; and the current scene.

U.S.-Russian Relations and the Founding of the United Nations
History 2242
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, RES
An examination of the critical role U.S.-Russian relations played in the founding of the United Nations. The course looks at American versus Soviet views of the purposes of the United Nations during the course of World War II; the important part the wartime alliance played in overcoming those differences; the October 1943 Moscow Conference; and subsequent proceedings of the Dumbarton Oaks, Yalta, and San Francisco Conferences. Students gain a deeper understanding of the issues through extensive use of the records of the FDR Presidential Library. 

Migrants and Refugees in the Americas
History 225
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS, RES
The wall. Raids. Deportations. Separation of families. Sanctuary. Refugee resettlement. These words—usually confined to policy, enforcement, and activism related to migrants and refugees—have exploded into the public view. Focusing on south-north migration from Latin American regions, the course looks at the history of migrant and refugee human rights over the last three decades, with readings including migrant, refugee, and activist narratives and an array of historical, legal, political, and other primary sources.

Shari’a and the History of Middle Eastern Society
History 2255
CROSS-LISTED: HUMAN RIGHTS, INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF RELIGIONS, MES
This course explores how shari’a, commonly translated as Islamic Law, has been understood and practiced (or resisted) in the Middle East from the early modern period to the present. Readings and discussions revolve around the intersection of shari’a with social spheres such as conversion, gender, slavery, and human rights.

Black Modernisms
History 2271 
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, FRENCH STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS
DESIGNATED: RJI COURSE
A survey of 20th-century anticolonial and postcolonial thought as it buttressed, abraded, or rejected prevailing notions of the modern. The course explores African diasporic political and social movements from revolutionary and anticolonial resistance to pan-Africanism and négritude. By focusing on the francophone world, students follow developments in Paris, Marseille, Saint-Domingue/Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Senegal, enabling them to assess heterogeneous responses to a single imperial framework. Texts by C. L. R. James, Aimé Césaire, Paulette and Jane Nardal, Léopold Senghor, Frantz Fanon, Maryse Condé, others. 

Confucianism: Humanity, Rites, and Rights
History 229
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES, GSS, HUMAN RIGHTS, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION
The class looks at the transformations of Confucian philosophy, social ethics, and political thought. Close readings in seminal texts provide a foundation in the earliest Confucian ideas of benevolence, rites, and righteousness. Among other ­topics, the course considers how Confucian thought shaped Western ideas of rights and how Confucian concepts of humanity, relational ethics, and social responsibility offer alternatives to Euro-American rights discourse.

China in the Eyes of the West
History 2301
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES, GIS
European Enlightenment thinkers viewed the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) as the world’s most enlightened despotism, but by the turn of the 20th century most Western thinkers considered China to be the “sick man of Asia.” This course reconstructs the visions of China formulated by Europeans and Americans during the 19th and 20th centuries, and explores how those visions changed over time. Texts include popular histories, news reports, travel writing, academic works, novels, photographs, films, websites, and blogs.

Gender and Sexuality in Modern China
History 2306
CROSS-LISTED: ANTHROPOLOGY, ASIAN STUDIES, GSS, HUMAN RIGHTS, STS
This course explores the roles of gender and sexuality in the construction of social and political power in China over the last 500 years, including traditional areas of focus such as foot binding, the cloistering of women, and the masculinization of public space; the transformations of Confucian age/sex hierarchies within the family; 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.

China’s Environment
History 2308
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, GIS
The fate of the global environment depends in large part on how China handles its environmental challenges. The country’s coal consumption is the single largest contributor to global climate change, and domestic environmental problems like desertification, air pollution, and a rapidly degrading water supply threaten to undermine its economic growth and political stability. This course explores the economic, social, cultural, and political dynamics that have generated the current crisis, and analyzes how and why the government has dramatically shifted its approach to emerge as a leader in climate change mitigation. 

London Calling: 80s Britain
History 2311 
Asked what she had changed in Britain in the 1980s, the prime minister Margaret Thatcher declared, “Everything!” This course examines a transformational and highly contested period in politics, culture, and society through documents from the UK National Archives and Thatcher Archive, plus seminal contemporary texts that exemplify a decade of upheaval. From the conservative revolution and inner-city riots to Princess Diana, Chariots of Fire, multiculturalism and post-punk, this is a time one historian calls “the revolutionary decade of the 20th century.”

The Political History of Common Sense
History 231
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, FRENCH STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS
This course broadens understanding of modern democracy by locating populism and its tensions with myriad forms of expertise, such as orthodox religious authorities, Enlightenment thought, abolitionism, and state forms of information gathering and knowledge production. Opposition to book learning and intellectualism may only be as old as the wide-scale presence of books, intellectuals, and experts in social life. So however seemingly universal and transhistorical folk knowledge, proverbial wisdom, and, especially, common sense are presented, their meaning, significance, and practice have changed over time.

American Indian History
History 2356
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS
An overview of the history created by and between native peoples, Africans, and Europeans, from the 15th through the 20th century. Attention is paid to the exchanges and contests between Native Americans and African Americans in the colonial and early national period, as well as today. Primary sources and historical interpretations of interactions provide a context for evaluating questions of current Native American politics and financial and land reparations.

Student Protest and Youth Activism in China
History 239
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES, GIS, HUMAN RIGHTS, POLITICS
From the May Fourth protests of 1919 to today’s demonstrations in Hong Kong, students have been key political actors in modern China. This course tracks developments in Chinese youths’ nationalist protests from the anti-American boycotts of 1905 through the twists and turns of the Chinese revolution, and considers how the Democracy Wall Movement (1978–79), Tiananmen Square protests (1989), Umbrella Movement (2014), and recent protests in Hong Kong have drawn on or departed from earlier repertoires of student activism.

African and African American Arts
History 243
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, ART HISTORY AND VISUAL CULTURE
The contemporary is a foreign concept to historical studies but one that is frequently used to talk about artists, artworks, and art exhibitions. Due in part to recent efforts of curators, gallerists, museum institutions, art critics, and auctioneers, African and African American art has garnered renewed academic interest and currency. This course surveys the long-standing and largely unheralded story about the cultural production of art within the context of 20th-century African, African American, and African diasporic history.

Mao’s China and Beyond
History 2481 
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES, GIS
No individual shaped modern China more than Mao Zedong. This course uses Mao’s life and writings as a framework for exploring modern Chinese history, beginning with an analysis of how the 20th-century revolutions relate to other social, cultural, and economic trends, including urbanization, industrialization, and the expansion of mass media. 

Environmental Histories of the Recent United States
History 2510
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, ARCHITECTURE, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, EXPERIMENTAL HUMANITIES, POLTICAL STUDIES
DESIGNATED: HSI COURSE
A critical exploration of the history of the 20th- and 21st-century United States through the country’s natural and built environments. Moving chronologically, the course considers the relationship between nature, labor, and capital, as well as the relationship between space, place, and race. Also addressed: federal and state environmental policies, activism regarding disability and health rights, fights over urban environmental concerns, perspectives from the American West, and the history of transnational racial, Indigenous, and environmental justice movements.

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 function of historical and mythical time in everyday life and the effect of politics and mass media on personal experience.

Capitalism and Slavery
History 2631 
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
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, and Human Rights: A History in Infrastructure
History 2702
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, HUMAN RIGHTS, STS
In recent years, human rights law and discourse have come under attack, theoretically by the political left and practically by the right. At the same time, some of the basic assumptions that enabled earlier protections of rights as outlined in the American and French revolutions have been undermined by changes in technological infrastructure, notably the blurring of the public and private, commerce and government, military and civilian spheres. This course examines the contemporary period in fields such as communications, housing, agriculture, energy, public health, and transportation, as well as in administrative bureaucracies, police, and military organizations.

The Civil War and Reconstruction
History 282
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES
An exploration of the connection between the American Civil War and the subsequent Reconstruction project in the former Confederate states. Also examined:?the competing understandings of the war’s goals by contemporaries; the experiences of various participants (Northerners, emancipated slaves, Southern whites) in Reconstruction; political and extrapolitical opposition to Reconstruction; and the institutional and constitutional legacy of the project.

The Past in the Present
History 291
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES
DESIGNATED: ELAS COURSE
Critical rigor, it has been argued, requires the historian to leave the present behind in pursuit of clarity, objectivity, and neutrality in the interpretation of the past. Conversely, philosopher George Santayana famously insisted on the need for “retentiveness,” warning: “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” The course examines ways in which the American past is used, engaged, debated, recalled, and reimagined in later times. Examples include slavery, the Constitution, labor struggles, and notions of “the American people.”

Beyond Witches, Abbesses, and Queens: European Women, 1500–1800
History 297
CROSS-LISTED: GSS, HUMAN RIGHTS
Women make history—as historical actors and as historians. This course examines the “woman question” in the medical, legal, religious, and political discourses of the early modern period through processes such as the centralization of European states, Protestant and Catholic reformations, explorations, and colonial settlement. It also serves as an opportunity to reflect upon the history of women’s studies, both as a field of inquiry and as an academic institution.

Making Silicon Valley Histories
History 298
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, EXPERIMENTAL HUMANITIES, HUMAN RIGHTS
Moving chronologically between 1945 and the present, the course examines the history of Silicon Valley and the technology industry. Texts include a wealth of primary sources, such as newspaper accounts, oral histories, photographic images, government documents, corporate reports, advertisements, and business journalism, as well as an emerging secondary literature. Issues discussed include race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality,  immigration and labor, and diversity and inequality in technology and the modern United States. 

The Second World War
History 301
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, POLITICS
The class examines the Second World War in all its manifold dimensions, from causes to consequences, covering all major fronts. Students taking the course as a Major Conference are strongly encouraged to use the resources of the FDR Library in Hyde Park, New York.

Political Ritual in the Modern World
History 3103
CROSS-LISTED: ANTHROPOLOGY, ASIAN STUDIES, GIS, HUMAN RIGHTS, SOCIOLOGY
Bastille Day, the U.S. presidential inauguration, the Olympic opening ceremony, 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. Topics covered include 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 picaresque history of exile, flights of fugitives, asylum, and extradition 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. Lone individuals, caught up in the competition between states, contributed unwittingly to the invention of national borders, international policing, and modern international law. Runaway wives, fugitive slaves, dissident pamphleteers, and an anti-imperial revolutionary are among the cases studied. 

Orwell and His World
History 311
Since George Orwell’s death in 1950, Animal Farm and 1984 between them have sold more than 40 million copies, and “Orwellian” has become, in the words of one linguist, “the most widely used adjective derived from the name of a modern writer … even nosing out the rival political reproach ‘Machiavellian,’ which had a 500-year head start.” This course looks at Orwell in the context of the tumultuous 1930s and 1940s, examining his take on British and international politics, culture, and society through his fiction, nonfiction, letters, and diaries.

How to Read and Write the History of the (Post)Colonial World
History 3138
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, MES 
The primary goal of the course is to think about historical narratives of the postcolonial worlds as constructed artifacts and as products of certain intellectual environments. Each class meeting explores an influential school of historical writing, such as the French Annales or Italian microhistory. Discussions revolve around the possibilities and limits of writing history in light of the existent ­historical sources, academic and disciplinary norms, other disciplinary influences (especially from literature and anthropology), and present political considerations.

Violent Culture and Material Pleasure in the Atlantic World
History 314
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, EXPERIMENTAL HUMANITIES, FRENCH STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS, LAIS 
Emeralds, chocolate, sugar, tobacco—precious, exotic, sweet, addictive. Like human actors, commodities have stories of their own. They shape human existence, create new sets of interactions, and offer a unique lens through which to view history. This course explores the hidden life of material objects that circulated from the early modern Atlantic into the rest of the world.

Revolutions: Four Case Studies in Revolutionary Violence
History 325
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES
The question of violence—of repressive governments, revolutions, and counterrevolutions—is traced across case studies from South Africa, France, Russia, and China. The course seeks to understand each revolution in terms of indigenously generated dynamics and world-historical factors. This is a graduate-level course offered jointly by the MAT Program and the College.

Latin America: Race, Religion, and Revolution
History 331
CROSS-LISTED: HUMAN RIGHTS, LAIS
Students investigate how racial concepts formed and became fixed ideas through distinct revolutionary-inspired debates on interracial mixture and Indigenous rights, and then consider the simultaneous rise of wars and conflicts over religious meanings and faiths. The latter part of the course focuses on Guatemala, which combined extreme violence over race, religion, and revolution, and focused global attention on Indigenous and human rights.

Finnegans Wake: Vico, Joyce, and the New Science
History 334
CROSS-LISTED: EXPERIMENTAL HUMANITIES, ICS, STS 
In 1725, Giambattista Vico presented a “New Science” of poetic imagination intended to recontextualize the established foundations of the natural sciences of Descartes and Bacon. In 1939, with much of the world on the verge of war, James Joyce presented an immersive demonstration of Vico’s science in Finnegans Wake. By turns confusing, hilarious, and profound, Joyce’s “vicociclometer” provided a reorientation in myth and history of the relation of ancient and modern life, religion, and politics. The class uses the “exception” provided by both texts to look at the norms of modern intellectual history.

Public History in the United States
History 337
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES,AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, GSS
Since events in Charlottesville during the summer of 2017, controversies over public commemoration of the national past have captured media attention. But engagement in self-serving interpretations of history by those who seek to shape understandings of national identity through means other than scholarly monographs have a long, influential genealogy. This seminar begins with a survey of U.S. public history from the early national period to the present, with a focus on the Progressive Era and the late 20th-century onset of the so-called culture wars.

The Politics of History
History 340
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, HUMAN RIGHTS
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? This course addresses these and other questions through readings that offer diverse perspectives on the place of narrative in history, the historian’s relation to the past, the construction of historiographical discourses, and the practice of historical commemoration. Writers discussed include Hayden White, Dominick LaCapra, Michel Foucault, G. W. F. Hegel, Walter Benjamin, and Joan Wallach Scott.

Commons and the Commune
History 343
CROSS-LISTED: ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS
The story of democracy in Europe is often told as one of elites developing theories of democracy in the Enlightenment, which were then accepted by a broader population. Yet Switzerland had a largely democratic confederation by 1291. The English Charter of the Magna Carta was for nobles, but it was paired with a Charter of the Forest that provided access to resources for peasants. This course considers the development and reception of the commune and commons from these early examples through the internet era of “creative commons” and “copyleft.”

Intermarriage and the Mixing of Peoples in American Society, Past and Present
History 345
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, JEWISH STUDIES
Intermarriage implies crossing a boundary or violating a prohibition (of law or custom) against certain kinds of marriage—racial, ethnic, or religious. The course examines these three kinds of intermarriage, but with a special focus on racial and ethnic mixing, past and present. In addition to the social processes involved, students look at the intellectual understandings of those processes over time; for example, how intermarrying couples and their descendants have been understood and how the census has classified people of mixed origins.

The Making of Modern Ethiopia
History 363
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, GIS, HUMAN RIGHTS
Ethiopia looms large in the global tradition, from antiquity to the present, and yet most people have limited familiarity with the historical and contemporary narratives of the region. This course explores the creation of modern Ethiopia, from the 19th-century consolidation of the state and the defeat of European expansion, through the Italian war and era of Haile Selassie, to the 1974 revolution and present. In addition to a survey of the politics and actors of these periods, consideration is paid to imperialism, Indigenous resistance, political prisoners, torture, and disappearance.

Contagion: On Rumor, Heresy, Disease, and Financial Panic
History 381
CROSS-LISTED: FRENCH STUDIES, EXPERIMENTAL HUMANITIES
DESIGNATED: HSI COURSE
How do we write the history of fleeting events, passing emotions, patent untruths, or impossibilities? This course explores some of the oldest objects and modes of communication, but it focuses on the period between the Great Famine of Northern Europe and the Great Fear during the French Revolution. The entangled histories of rumor, heresy, disease, and financial panic suggest themselves as precursors of mass media propaganda, agitprop, and fake news. Student projects use old and new media, in the process reshaping how history is told (read, viewed, or otherwise experienced). 

Tibetan History
History 383
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS, INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF RELIGIONS
DESIGNATED: HSI COURSE
Tibet is a resource-rich area of mountains and grasslands on a high plateau in the center of Asia that is home to diverse peoples, most of whom practice Buddhism and use dialects of the Tibetan language. But even this most basic characterization of Tibet is complicated by political assertions and contentions. This seminar analyzes a range of perspectives on Tibetan history, religion, and cultural production, in the process engaging with and critiquing Orientalist projections, Tibet as an activist cause, and contemporary voices of Tibetans in China and the diaspora.

Native Arts, Native Studies: (Re)Framing the History of Indigenous Art and Collection
History 384
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, EXPERIMENTAL HUMANITIES, HUMAN RIGHTS
DESIGNATED: HSI COURSE
This seminar, offered jointly with CCS and open to moderated undergraduates, provides a historical look at how academic and arts institutions have engaged with and framed Native art and objects. Using case studies, students explore how Native collections have entered archives and arts institutions, how these institutions are being forced (or volunteering) to reconsider Native objects and artistic production, and how Native communities and activists have framed arguments on legal and ethical grounds to engage with issues of reparations and repatriation of objects. 

Witchcraft as Early Modernity
History 386
DESIGNATED: HSI COURSE
This course explores the witch craze, both practice and persecution, with a focus on Europe from 1450 to 1750. Students may find that occult practices and moral panics today would be more familiar than strange in the 17th-century world, despite the ruptures ushered in by the rational agents of early modern change. Through the lens of witchcraft, students in the class look at history making as human progress and stake out their own theories of historical change. 

Reading Gender in Archive: Research Methodology of Gender History
History 387
CROSS-LISTED: GSS
Designed for students working on women’s or gender history for their Senior Projects, the course offers training in reading the archive from a gender perspective. It is often said that history is “his-story” because the “building blocks” of history—the archive—are produced by men, and as such are skewed toward male experiences and perspectives. Participants analyze various primary sources, as well as scholarly works, and discuss how a gender-sensitive methodology of reading the archive can be employed to "recover" women’s voices.