Surveys the major movements and developments in Europe during the era of European expansion and dominance--from the devastations of the Thirty Years War to the Second World War--and up to the current era of European Union. Topics include: the French Revolution and the birth of nationalism; the scientific and industrial revolutions; the modern history of international relations; imperialism, fascism, the Holocaust, the two World Wars, and the present and potential roles of Europe at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

This seminar surveys the history of shopping from the seventeenth to early-twentieth century. From its origin as a term for wastefulness, consumption is now understood as an essential feature of prosperity in modern society. How did shopping change over this period to occupy such an important place in our world? Using primary, secondary and material sources, students will examine the commodities, shopping habits, business strategies, consumer politics, marketplaces, and identities that shaped and sustained the rise of retail.

This course will trace the emergence and expansion of Greek civilization in the Mediterranean between the Bronze Age and Alexander the Great. Among themes to be explored are political structures, trade, slavery, gender relations, and religion, as well as the contributions of ancient Greeks to literary genres (drama, rhetoric, historiography, philosophy) and to the visual arts. Throughout we will consider how the history of the ancient Greeks can speak to modern concerns.

What world gave rise to Mary Lyon's vision for Mount Holyoke and enabled her to carry her plans to success? Has her vision persisted or been overturned? We will examine the conditions, assumptions, and exclusions that formed Mount Holyoke and the arrangements of power and struggles for justice that shaped it during and after Lyon's lifetime.

This course explores the complex, often comic, and ultimately tragic history of Bohemia, a territory located today in the Czech Republic, but previously a part of the Habsburg Monarchy, then of Czechoslovakia, and then of Hitler's Third Reich. Students will complement historical studies with autobiographical material and contemporary fiction, beginning with the Revolution of 1848, progressing through the achievements and worrisome trends of Emperor Francis Joseph's 68-year reign, and concluding with the world wars.

This course offers a sweeping history of how the people in China have interacted with the natural world. Students will investigate historically specific social, economic, and political forces that have shaped environmental transformations in China. The course is organized thematically within a chronological framework. The course concludes with a closer look at the development of environmental practice in the modern era.

Over the last century, religionists have labored to discover the meaning of African dispersal beyond the continent and its accompanying spiritual lineages. What theories of encounter sufficiently adjudicate the synthetic religious cultures of African-descended persons in North America, South America, and the Caribbean? What are the cross-disciplinary methodologies that scholars utilize to understand African religious cultures in the Western hemisphere? Firstly, this course will introduce the field of Africana religious studies.

This course examines the discursive relationship between race, power and law in contemporary U.S. society. Readings examine the ways in which racial bodies are constituted in the cultural economy of American society where citizens of African descent dwell. We explore the rules and social practices that govern the relationship of race to gender, nationality, sexuality, and class in U.S. courts and other cultural institutions. Thinkers covered include W.E.B. DuBois, Kimberle Crenshaw, Derrick Bell, and Richard Delgado, among others.

This class explores African approaches to performance, premised on the interdisciplinarity of theatre in many African societies. We take our inspiration from centuries of apprentice-style artist training in some indigenous West African societies. The evolution of oral and popular performance traditions into literary theatre has also necessitated a similar trend in the training of the modern actor. The primary object of this class is to be able to embody a plethora of idiomatic expressions.

This course seeks to understand how protest fuels the creation and sustenance of black religious movements and novel spiritual systems in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will examine the dissentive qualities of selected African American activists, community workers, scholars, spiritual/religious leaders and creative writers. By the end of this course, students will be able to thoughtfully respond to the questions, "What is spirituality?"; "What is dissent?"; and "Has blackness required resistive spiritual communities?"