Explores significance of im/migrant workers and their transnational social movements to U.S. history in the late 19th and 20th centuries. How have im/migrants responded to displacement, marginalization and exclusion, by redefining the meanings of home, citizenship, community and freedom? What are the connections between mass migration and U.S. imperialism? What are the histories of such cross-border social movements as labor radicalism, borderlands feminism, Black and Brown Liberation, and anti-colonialism?

When he died in 2005, a New York Times obituary described African American comedian Richard Pryor as “the groundbreaking comedian whose profanely personal insights into race relations and modern life made him one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.” Pryor innovated standup comedy thus inventing new discourses about race and modes of expressing antiracist thinking in the United States.

This course provides declared history majors and intended majors with crucial tools for doing history, including developing historical questions, conducting archival and other primary source research, and building practical skills for delivering original research to an intended audience. In addition, students grapple with pressing questions of the discipline: What is the past’s connection to the present? What is at stake when researching and writing history? How do different historical methods enable critical readings of different sources?

Offered as MES 244 and HST 244. How could revolution be theorized from the MENA region? How might older histories and vocabularies of social change connect to recent events in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Tunisia? In the first part of this course, students engage prominent theories of revolution generated within EuroAmerican and MENA contexts. Next, the course considers diverse theories of social change generated within key moments in the history of the modern Middle East, from Ottoman constitution in 1876 to postcolonial revolts in Oman, Yemen, and Algeria.

Twenty-first century scholars argue that race is a constructed social identity that began to coalesce around the seventeenth century. But were they right? This course looks to the Middle Ages to challenge the consensus that racial constructions were a byproduct of modernity. Does race function differently between the world of Latin Christendom and that of the dar al-Islam? What are the advantages and dangers of using the prism of race to analyze ethnic, cultural, and religious differences in this medieval period?

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.

Silicon Valley seeks to remake the future. This course focuses on its past. Students explore the history of American technology, capitalism, and power that created Silicon Valley, and reflect on how its rise has shaped U.S. labor, leisure, and values. Discussions include: education in an age of A.I.; the military-industrial roots of Big Tech; the dot-com bubble; techno-utopias and transhumanism; the gig economy and labor precarity; venture capital and crypto; social media and the attention economy; the religious dimensions of techno-optimism; the rise of alt-right tech bros; and what A.I.

Examines the longevity of the U.S. Civil War in historical memory, as a pivotal period in the development of American racism and African American activism. Explores cutting-edge histories, primary source materials, documentaries, popular films, and visual and political culture. Explores the Civil War as a mass slave insurrection and studies the myriad meanings of Emancipation. Looks at the impact of slavery on race and racism on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Enrollment limited to 40.

This course provides an introductory survey of African history from the nineteenth century to approximately World War II. In doing so, it provides a political, social, and economic history of the continent framed around the experiences of the continent’s peoples. Throughout the course, students ask the structural questions of what role slavery, abolition, colonialism, global industrialization, and capitalism played in shaping the continent’s past.