Catalogue

Historical Studies

historicalstudies.bard.edu

Faculty

Tabetha Ewing (director), Richard Aldous, Myra Young Armstead, Nathanael Aschenbrenner, Leon Botstein, Christian Ayne Crouch, Robert J. Culp, Ibrahim Elhoudaiby, Jeanette Estruth, Valentina Grasso, Lloyd Hazvineyi, 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, 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

• “A Delicate Balance: US-China-Taiwan Relations under the Nixon and Carter Administrations in the 1970s” 
• “Small Towns Must Struggle: The Impact of President Lyndon Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty’ in Ellenville, New York, 1960–present”
• “The Victors of Finance: How Federal Connections to Corporate Wealth Weakened Reforms in the 2008 Financial Crisis” 
• “Weaponizing Ballet: An Episode in American Cold War Diplomacy”

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.

Photography in Africa and Methods in Visual History
History 1003 
CR0SS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, ART HISTORY AND VISUAL CULTURE, HUMAN RIGHTS, PHOTOGRAPHY
Visual history is an underrecognized discipline and historical method. Over the last 30 years, the field has become critical to studying marginalized historical figures, sociocultural practices, and events in African and Black diasporic histories. Photography, as both historical actor and source, is an important element of the field. This course introduces the development of photography in Africa and the use of photographs from the late 19th century to recent times. Students work with campus art and archival collections, and interact with guest speakers, including curators, archivists, artists, and historians.

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.

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 AND RJI 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.

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.

Bread and Wine: France, 1315–1825
History 146
CROSS-LISTED: FRENCH STUDIES
This course explores early practices of making bread, breaking bread, drinking wine, quaffing ale, and sipping coffee, tea, and chocolate. Students read about medieval and early modern land cultivation (grape and grain); of gourmandise and asceticism in medieval women’s religious culture; of new seasonings brought to France by returning merchants and explorers; and of Enlightenment Paris, with the rise of the café and newspapers, invention of the restaurant, and cultivation of an aesthetics of taste, all situated within the context of French global trade, expansion, migration, and burgeoning nationalism.

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.

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
This course surveys the major processes that contributed to the rise of the modern Middle East and traces the history of modern institutions in the region. Topics include the making of modern armies, political institutions, nation-states, economies, families, reform movements in the Ottoman Empire, European imperialism, nationalist movements (including the Arab-Israeli conflict), political Islam, and the Arab Spring (and its aftermath). Students also examine primary documents and reflect on the use of history in contemporary contexts.

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. 

India in the Classical Age
History 188
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES, LITERATURE, RELIGION
Students explore foundational texts of Indic religions and culture to comprehend the historical contexts of some aspects of Indian society: What is Bhagavad Gita? What is caste? Who created the Hindu religion? How did yoga originate? What does Kamasutra say? The Indian subcontinent, home to some of the earliest civilizations of the world, has remained a distinct but fluid cultural zone. This course examines how the multiregional cultural identities crystallized under different political dynasties through secular and religious patronage from approximately 2500 BCE to 
1200 CE. 

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. 

India after Gandhi: A History of Postcolonial Democracy
History 198
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES, GIS, POLITICS
DESIGNATED: HSI COURSE
Home to about 18 percent of humanity, India is the largest democracy in the world. After 200 years of colonial rule, India’s political independence was bittersweet. After British India was partitioned into India and Pakistan, horrific communal violence ensued, along with one of the biggest mass migrations in history. The leaders of the new nation inherited an India afflicted by poverty, religious violence, social inequality, and illiteracy. How did India build itself? Have the divisive forces perished? What is the state of democracy in India today? The course investigates these and other questions.

What Is an American?
History 199
CROSS-LISTED: AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES
As the new American republic was being born in 1782, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735–1813), a French émigré who had lived in New York’s Hudson River Valley as a prosperous farmer, asked the question: “What is an American?” His extended answer, contained in his collection of essays, Letters from an American Farmer, was written to a European audience as a description of life in late 18th-century British North America. This course uses de Crèvecoeur’s work to look backward through the colonial period and forward to the present.

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.

From Long War to Short Peace: Russian History and International Politics since 1985
History 202
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, RES
In the last decade of the 20th century, Russia’s interest in global partnerships and reformist desires were a welcome but short-lived phenomenon. This course explores the country’s return to imperialist ambitions and Cold War–style isolation. Why was the period of openness so brief? How are Russia’s international politics influenced by historical experiences and internal political and economic crises? Readings on soft power, foreign diplomacy, and concepts of geopolitics and heartland popular among President Putin’s associates.

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.

Wars of Religion
History 2035
DESIGNATED: HSI COURSE
This course is a journey across the motley religious landscape of early modern Europe, in which the ideas and practices of heretics, infidels, and unbelievers nestled in the spaces where orthodox Catholicism held sway. 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. Students trace the stories of real people through Inquisition records, diaries, and conversion tales; read early pamphlets and accounts of uprisings; and look at how radical religious ideologies sustained themselves in the face of official repression and, more challenging, official approval.

Stakes and Claims: A Social and Cultural History of Ownership
History 2041
CROSS-LISTED: ARCHITECTURE, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, FRENCH STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS 
Ownership means different things over time and among different peoples. This course charts a history about the lived experience of possession, spirit possession, and ownership of property—real and moveable, animal and human, intellectual and intangible. With a focus on France and areas of significant French contact from 1400 to 1900, the class explores challenges to the idea of property during the early modern religious upheavals and radical changes to the idea as inscribed in the late 18th-century written constitutions that made it a basic right. 

Swinging London: Britain in the ’60s
History 2060
Carnaby Street, the miniskirt, Shirley Bassey, Mods, Beatlemania, Michael Caine as Alfie, and the Profumo scandal all represented a swinging London that took Britain to the forefront of international culture, gossip, and fashion. But there was another side to the 1960s, as rising affluence was accompanied by fears of national decline and public tastes were often more conventional than they were “modern.” This course examines the political, cultural, and social history of these two Sixties and asks if John Lennon was right when he quipped, “Nothing happened except that we all dressed up.”

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.”

“To Overthrow the World”: A History of Revolutionary Socialism, 1864–1943
History 2129
CROSS-LISTED: POLITICS, RES
A survey of the three Socialist “Internationals” from Marx’s time to that of Stalin, and the ideas and controversies that animated them. Key themes include the Marx-Bakunin feud and the anarchist challenge to socialism; the role of the Second International in entrenching Marxism as the dominant socialist tradition; the general strike as a way to stave off “imperialist war” between European powers; World War I and the Russian Revolution; and espionage and the role of Soviet foreign policy in shaping international Communism in the Stalin years.

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.

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.

From Shtetl to Socialism: East European Jewry in the Modern Era
History 215 / Jewish Studies 215
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, RES
Eastern Europe was the largest and most vibrant center of Jewish life for almost 500 years prior to the Holocaust. In that period East European Jewry underwent a wrenching process of modernization, creating radically new forms of community, culture, and political organization that still shape Jewish life today in the United States and Israel. Topics: the rise of Hasidism and Haskalah (Enlightenment), modern Jewish political movements, pogroms and Russian government policy toward the Jews, and the development of modern Jewish literature in Yiddish and Hebrew.

London’s Burning: Britain in the ’70s
History 2170
By the end of the 1970s, Britain seemed to be standing at the edge of the abyss. The optimism of the ’60s was gone, as was the empire that had for so long been the source of British prosperity and power. Yet for all the upheaval and loss of confidence, the ’70s was a period of cultural originality, social change, and political ambition that brought about profound and lasting change—and all to the soundtrack of the Selecter, David Bowie, and the Clash.

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.

Science in the Golden Age of Islam
History 221
CROSS-LISTED: MEDIEVAL STUDIES, MES, PHILOSOPHY, STS
The Renaissance of Western Europe was in part the result of a flow of ideas coming out of the Islamic world, where ancient natural philosophy had been integrated with monotheistic religion. Descartes, Vesalius, Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton are not so much revolutionaries of a scientific revolution as they are part of a continuous flow of ideas with a source in the Islamic world. This course emphasizes the continuity of natural philosophical thought from the Classical era to the Renaissance. 

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 

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. 

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
DESIGNATED: MIGRATION INITIATIVE AND RJI COURSE
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. 

Turkey and Europe
History 228
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, POLITICS
An examination of the “Eastern Question” from the Napoleonic era to 1923’s Treaty of Lausanne, which fixed (most of) the post-Ottoman borders in the Middle East, at least until the rise of the Islamic State. While the main focus is on Great Power and Ottoman diplomacy, attention is also paid to internal developments in the Ottoman Empire, especially those brought about by (or in opposition to) European influence; the Ottoman role in World War I; and current relations between Turkey and the European Union.

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.

Shanghai and Hong Kong: China’s Global Cities
History 2302
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, GIS, HUMAN RIGHTS
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.

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.

Power and Performance in the Colonial Atlantic
History 236 / Theater 236
See Theater 236 for a full course description.

The Indian Ocean World: South Asia from a Transoceanic Perspective
History 237
CR0SS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, ASIAN STUDIES, GIS
The Indian Ocean has transmitted people across continents for centuries, serving as an important channel of cultural, economic, and sociopolitical exchange. This course looks at the history of South Asia with a focus on the confluence of African and Asian trends and their impact on global Afro-Asian cultures.

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.

Credit, Corporations, and the Making of Modern Middle Eastern Families
History 2552
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, MES
An examination of the processes that gave rise to modern Middle Eastern families and shaped the gender roles therein. The course focuses on the decay of the traditional Ottoman house[hold] and its substitution with families and corporations. Topics include the organization of kin and commerce before the modern family; family in classical Islamic law; gender and parenting in legal discourses of the 19th century; and debt, corporations, and the bifurcation of households.

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.

Cool Britannia: Britain in the ’90s
History 290
In 1996, Newsweek called London “the coolest city on the planet” and Vanity Fair proclaimed that “London swings again.” In the 1990s, British culture seemed to reclaim a position that it hadn’t held since the ’60s: the center of global ideas, fashion, and the arts. The creative energy and optimism of the decade got a name, Cool Britannia; a soundtrack, Britpop; and a face, Tony Blair. This course examines the cultural and political legacy of the decade.

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.”

Modern Yiddish Culture through Film
History 295
CROSS-LISTED: JEWISH STUDIES, RES
In the modern period, a majority of the world’s Jews spoke Yiddish. Starting in the late 19th century, Yiddish became the vehicle for a remarkable flourishing of cultural and political activity in the East European heartland as well as in emigrant communities in the United States and elsewhere. Repressed by Stalin and nearly eradicated by Hitler, Yiddish persists today as a spoken language in Hasidic communities while secular activists create new forms of Yiddish culture. This course explores the range of modern Yiddish cultural production through the prism of film.

Nationalism in the Middle East
History 296
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, MES
A survey of the history of nationalism and nationalist movements in the 20th-century Middle East. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I gave rise to nationalism as the most potent political ideology in the region. It was not long before nation-states became the paradigmatic way of organizing collective life across the post-Ottoman world. The course explores this shift from imperial province to nation-state, with an emphasis on the role of colonialism, armed struggle, labor, financial institutions, public works, sports, art, and infrastructure in forming nationalist movements. 

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. 

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.

The Great War in World History
History 3224
DESIGNATED: HSI COURSE
Popular understanding of World War I tends to rely on knowledge drawn from diplomatic and military historical approaches, and to focus on the Western front. To extend and complicate this view, students read the classic “causes of WWI” literature as well as gender, cultural, and postcolonial treatments of the war. Working with this diversity of texts provides the opportunity to discuss how different historiographical approaches change how we understand “what happened.” 

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.

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
History 381
CROSS-LISTED: FRENCH STUDIES, EXPERIMENTAL HUMANITIES
DESIGNATED: HSI COURSE
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. 

Hashish in the “Orient”: Social and Legal History
History 389
CROSS-LISTED: GIS, MES
This seminar explores the shifting social and legal attitudes toward the consumption of hashish from the Mamluk (13th – 16th century) to modern-day Egypt. Classical Islamic law is equivocal on the permissibility of consuming cannabis, which, in Mamluk society, was commonplace. But in the aftermath of the colonial encounter in the late 19th century, the consumption of hashish came to symbolize the illnesses of the “Orient.” The class analyzes this shift, examining legal manuals, medical reports, court records, police documents, travelers’ accounts, poetry, movies, and novels. 

Domesticity and Capital: Gender, Households, and Women’s Wealth in South Asia
History 390
CROSS-LISTED: ASIAN STUDIES, GIS, GSS
Historically, women in South Asia have played an active role in politics and business enterprises and have 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, theories of capital and kinship, and primary sources such as archival documents and religious texts.