An introduction to different genres of prose and poetry in the Classical period, with attention to linguistic differences over time and region. Readings will be chosen from works such as Herodotus' History of the Persian War, the poetry of Solon the wise Athenian lawmaker, the philosophical dialogues of Plato, the Athenian courtroom speeches of Lysias, the tragedies of Euripides. Prerequisite: three semesters of Greek or permission of the instructor.

A yearlong introduction to ancient Greek through the language of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the two 8th-century epics that represent the culmination of a long and rich tradition of oral poetry. The ancients regarded these poems as unparalleled masterpieces; the great tragedian Aeschylus called his own plays "crumbs from Homer's table," and both epics have endured over the millennia and are still alive and relevant.

Topics course: In this course, we focus on the work of reconstruction, recovery and memorialization in the aftermath of war and consider how that work interacted with gendered experience. Primary questions will include: Was the aftermath of war as gender-specific as war experience itself? What role did women take in postwar recoveries? How was the aftermath of war reflected in cultural production through fiction, film and visual art in the twentieth century? Primary focus will be on Europe, but students can expect to actively engage with the transnational effects and sources.

Topics course: This course interrogates and historicizes the problem of “development” in 20th-century Africa. In doing so, we query the assumptions made by colonial officials, postcolonial leaders, social scientific experts and local communities as they sought to understand and articulate African pathways into a largely ill-defined social and economic modernity.

This course is a general, introductory survey of African history through the end of the slave trade. It provides students with a framework for understanding Africa's early political, social and economic history and for appreciating the strategies African peoples employed as they made sense of, accommodated themselves to and confronted their changing landscapes.

How much can historians learn about the daily lives of the mass of the population in the past? Can a people’s history recapture the thoughts and deeds of subjects as well as rulers? Critical examination of attempts at total history from below for selected English and French locales. The class re-creates families, congregations, guilds and factions in a German town amid the religious controversy and political revolution of the 1840s.

Topics course: The dramatic transformation in gender relations is a key feature of Japan’s premodern history. How Japanese women and men have constructed norms of behavior in different historical periods, how gender differences were institutionalized in social structures and practices, and how these norms and institutions changed over time. The gendered experiences of women and men from different classes from approximately the seventh through the 19th centuries.

Examination of the factors leading to the war in Asia, the nature of the conflict and the legacy of the war for all those involved. Topics include Japan’s seizure of Korea, the invasion of China, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the war in the Pacific, the racial dimensions of the Japanese empire, the comfort women, biological warfare, the dropping of the atomic bombs and the complicated relationship between history and memory.

The history of the Romans and other Mediterranean peoples from the first to the early fifth centuries A.D. With Emperor Augustus, the traditional Republican form of rule was reshaped to accommodate the personal rule of an Emperor that governed a multiethnic empire of 50 million successfully for several centuries. Imperial Rome represents the paradigmatic classical empire that many later empires sought to emulate. We trace how this complex imperial society evolved to meet different challenges.

An introduction to major developments and interactions among people in Europe and Asia before modernity. The Silk Roads, long distance networks that allowed people, goods, technology, religious beliefs and other ideas to travel between China, India and Rome/Mediterranean, and the many points in between, developed against the backdrop of the rise and fall of steppe nomadic empires in Inner Asia. We examine these as interrelated phenomena that shaped Eurasian encounters to the rise of the world-conquering Mongols and the journey of Marco Polo.