[^C] Participants in this seminar will explore the environmental and social histories of nine commodities: sugar, silver, silk, coffee, tobacco, sneakers, microchips, units of bandwidth, and the human body. Each of these commodities represents a complex array of linkages among producers, consumers, and intermediaries over time and space. Readings draw upon the disciplines of history, ecology, anthropology, and geography to place these commodities in their social, environmental, and spatial contexts.

(Offered as HIST 392 [ME/TC/TE] and ALSC 359) This seminar explores contemporary Iran from a historical and interdisciplinary perspective. The aim of the course is both to provide an overall understanding of the history of Iran, as well as those key elements of religion, literature, legend, and politics that together shape Iran's understanding of itself. We will utilize a wide variety of sources, including Islamic and local histories, Persian literature, architecture, painting and ceramics, film, political treatises, Shiite theological writing, foreign travel accounts, and U.S.

(Offered as AMST 374 and HIST 374 [US]) In the largest incidence of forced removal in American history, the U.S. incarcerated 120,000 people of Japanese descent during WWII, two-thirds of whom were American citizens. Preceded by half a century of organized racism, the attack on Pearl Harbor provided justification for imprisonment of an entire ethnic group solely on the basis of affiliation by “blood.” At the same time, Japanese Americans served in the U.S.

(Offered as HIST 368 and ASLC 368) This seminar examines the role of various frontier regions and borderlands in the long span of Chinese history. Ever since the ancient times, the development of agricultural communities, dynastic states, and Sinitic cultures in China was deeply intertwined with the fate of the societies on its borders such as Mongolia, Manchuria, Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan, and the mountainous southwestern regions.

[TE] This course seeks to provide an introduction to the fundamentals of military strategy and the “art of war.” We will begin with readings and discussions about the origins of war and the nature of conflict and then examine the origins of classical strategy, reading the work of Clausewitz and Jomini, maritime strategists such as Mahan and Corbett, and airpower theorists such as Douhet. We will also look more broadly at the ideas of Sun Tzu, T.E.

(Offered as HIST 352 [US/TC/TS], AMST 352, BLST 351, and SOCI 352) Focusing on the United States, this course introduces students to foundational questions and texts central to the history of education and education studies. We will explore the competing goals and priorities Americans have held for primary, secondary and post-secondary education and ask how and why these visions have influenced – or failed to influence – classrooms, schools, and educational policy.

(Offered as HIST 351 [US/TS] and AMST 351) A history of urban America in the industrial era, this course will focus especially on the city of Holyoke as a site of industrialization, immigration, urban development, and deindustrialization. We will begin with a walking tour of Holyoke and an exploration of the making of a planned industrial city. We will then investigate the experience of several key immigrant groups – principally Irish, French Canadian, Polish, and Puerto Rican – using both primary and secondary historical sources, as well as fiction.

(Offered as HIST 344 and LLAS 344) Sixty years after its triumph, the Cuban revolution continues to ignite controversy and to influence the politics of the Americas and beyond This course will provide an in-depth examination of the origins, course, development, and historical interpretations of the Cuban revolution over its first half-century. Its charismatic leader, Fidel Castro, will receive special attention, as will his closest collaborators: the honorary Cuban, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and Fidel's younger brother, Raúl.

Diamonds (Guns and Money): An African History of a Precious Commodity

This course offers an opportunity for history majors to reflect upon the practice of history. How do we claim to know anything about the past at all? How do historians construct the stories they tell about the past from the fragmentary remnants of former times? What is the connection of historians’ work to public memory? How do we judge the truth and value of these stories and memories? The course explores questions such as these through readings and case studies drawn from a variety of places and times. Two class meetings per week.