This course will examine the social, cultural, political, and economic history of African Americans from emancipation and Reconstruction through the present. Emphasis will fall on postwar southern social and economic developments, the rise of segregation, northern migrations, black class stratification, nationalism, the twentieth-century civil rights movement, and current trends in African American political, social, and economic life.

The power to produce food and reproduce society gave women significant public voice in African societies in the past. But over 200 years they lost that public voice and control over subsistence. Why, when women are still producing food and people, is the social and political voice of women so much less significant than it was before? We explore African womens' work of governing, production, and social reproduction across the tumultuous changes of the 20th century.

"Black Metropolis" refers to the more than half a million black people jammed into a South Side ghetto in Chicago at mid-twentieth century that featured an entrenched black political machine, a prosperous black middle class, and a thriving black cultural scene in the midst of massive poverty and systemic inequality. This course will follow the political, economic, and cultural developments of what scholars considered to be the typical urban community in postwar United States.

This reading- and writing-intensive course draws upon the intellectual traditions of African American, African, and African diasporic studies in order to explore the connections and disjunctures among people of African descent. While the course pays attention to national, regional, and historical contexts, it asks this question: what do African descended people have in common and when and how are their experiences and interests different?

This seminar explores the diverse experiences of Central American nations in the twentieth century. From a common basis in an export-oriented agriculture, social and political alternatives ranging from social democracy to recurrent military rule, neofascist regimes, and revolutionary socialism have emerged in the isthmus. The course uses materials ranging from autobiography and literature to historical and anthropological studies to understand how this came to be.

This research seminar will explore a variety of Left radical traditions in the United States from the late nineteenth century through the end of the twentieth. What does it mean to be "a radical," and how have definitions changed over time? What impact have American radicals had on electoral politics and the larger society? We will pay special attention to the connections between political and cultural radicalism, as well as to government and private campaigns aimed at suppressing radical movements.

This course looks at the scientific content and intellectual context of Darwin's theory of evolution - his facts, metaphors, hypotheses, and philosophical assumptions. Readings from Darwin and his sources, and examination of the organisms he studied. A background in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history or whole organism biology is recommended.

This research seminar examines the history of Qing China (1644-1911), the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922), and the Russian Empire (1721-1917) in the early modern era. The course is organized thematically and introduces important conceptual frameworks in historical inquiries. Students are to explore emergent research in state formation, economic development, social changes, and cultural dynamics. The central questions to be considered include the role of the state as well as its negotiation with varied ruling mechanisms within each of the three expansive landmass empires.

Recent cultural histories of imperialism--European as well as U.S.--have illuminated the workings of race and gender at the heart of imperial encounters. This course will examine the United States' relationship to imperialism through the lens of such cultural histories. How has the encounter between Europe and America been remembered in the United States? How has the cultural construction of 'America' and its 'others' called into play racial and gender identities? How have the legacies of slavery been entwined with U.S. imperial ambitions at different times?

We live in an age of energy crises, in which the future of energy is questioned in countless headlines and Twitter feeds. Often our energy agony accompanies other assumptions about energy's past, in particular the idea that social change invariably follows the discovery of new energy technologies. From food to fuel cells, this colloquium charts a more complicated and interesting history, a history in which people have continually shaped and made meaningful the energies that fuel the modern world.