First-Year Seminars 110ND - Nomads!

In this first year seminar, we will learn how to use primary textual and visual sources to critically analyze everyday life of the nomadic communities living in Central Eurasian and Inner Asia steppes, such as the Mongols and the Scythians; and of the Lakota and the Comanche peoples in the Great Plains in North America. Their histories are often told against the rise of their rival powers, mostly sedentary ones. Students will listen to interviews, speak with leading historians on these subjects, study art, and read accounts by and about these nomads. Taken together, we study how certain communities came to be represented and misrepresented in the history and contemporary imagination of others.

Mount Holyoke first-year students only, by placement.