Examines the confrontation, assimilation, and transformation of Amerindian, African, and European cultures in Latin America from the sixteenth century to the present. Focuses on the processes in which distinctive self-images emerged in the region and how these images have been challenged and changed over time. Uses films, literature, and folk traditions to complement scholarly analysis of the emergence of a New World mentality.

Explores societies generated in the Americas by several widely distributed export crops. Multinational and cross-cultural comparisons holding constant the crop itself allows a focus on the possible variations by time and place in each commodity's technologies, labor systems, farm sizes, and social structure; their political and social dynamics; the problematic features of capitalism in agriculture, or if, how, and when do peasants become farmers and farming agribusiness?

Material culture studies examine relationships between people and objects. Tangible artifacts like furniture, clothing, ceramics, tools, and buildings give insight into communties' identities, aspirations, and struggles. This course approaches early American and indigenous histories through objects, and considers how interdisciplinary methodologies can reveal alternative understandings of the past.

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.

This course is an introduction to the social and cultural history of the American film industry since the 1890s. The course surveys the evolution of Hollywood cinema from the silent era through the so-called classical period and through the post-World War II breakup of the studio system.

The United States emerged from the Second World War as the most powerful nation on earth. This course explores American political, cultural, and social life in the postwar era, with an eye toward helping students gain a firmer understanding of contemporary issues and conflicts in our nation and around the world.

A review of Italian through film. Cultural and linguistic aspects of five to six films and related readings will be the focus of this course and the starting point for class activities, conversation, written exercises, and grammar review. This interdisciplinary approach offers students an opportunity to explore Italian culture deeply, while at the same time improving their reading, writing, and speaking skills. The course also features regular conversation sessions with language assistants who are native speakers.

This course emphasizes understanding, speaking, and writing in a contemporary context. It also promotes creativity with presentations and original group projects. It includes Web activities, films, short stories, and frequent conversation sessions with language assistants who are native speakers.

This course emphasizes understanding, speaking, and writing in a contemporary context. It also promotes creativity with presentations and original group projects. It includes Web activities, films, short stories, and frequent conversation sessions with language assistants who are native speakers.

This course will examine the cultural, social, political, and economic history of African Americans through the Civil War. Topics covered include the African background to the African American experience, the Atlantic slave trade, introduction and development of slavery, master-slave relationships, the establishment of black communities, slave revolts, the political economy of slavery, women in slavery, the experiences of free blacks, the crisis of the nineteenth century, and the effect of the Civil War.