This seminar will focus on the sacrificial systems of humans from their earliest discernible developments among human foraging groups, through their increasing elaboration in cultures based on agriculture, to their extreme developments and inversions in complex cultures. We will especially focus on the meanings given to human sacrifice and martyrdom in complex cultures. Among the many cultures we will be touching on are the Ainu and Nootka, the Aztec and Romans, the modern Indians and Europeans.

Between 1650 and 1820, New England's economy largely rested on its maritime prowess: shipbuilding, fishing, whaling, and blue-water commerce. It is the argument of this course that such success was not simply a matter of economic evolution by laissez faire principles but an expression of New England culture, including its political economy, its religion, and its family.

This class explores the long and contentious relationships between the United States and the Latin American nations. It focuses on the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, analyzing the Spanish-American war, upheaval in Central America in the 1920s, the place of Cuba within the growing informal U.S. empire, trade relations with the South American nations, the impact of the Cold War on the hemisphere, the role of the CIA in destabilizing and overthrowing popularly elected government, and the U.S.

This class explores the long and contentious relationships between the United States and the Latin American nations. It focuses on the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, analyzing the Spanish-American war, upheaval in Central America in the 1920s, the place of Cuba within the growing informal U.S. empire, trade relations with the South American nations, the impact of the Cold War on the hemisphere, the role of the CIA in destabilizing and overthrowing popularly elected government, and the U.S.

This class explores the long and contentious relationships between the United States and the Latin American nations. It focuses on the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, analyzing the Spanish-American war, upheaval in Central America in the 1920s, the place of Cuba within the growing informal U.S. empire, trade relations with the South American nations, the impact of the Cold War on the hemisphere, the role of the CIA in destabilizing and overthrowing popularly elected government, and the U.S.

This class explores the long and contentious relationships between the United States and the Latin American nations. It focuses on the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, analyzing the Spanish-American war, upheaval in Central America in the 1920s, the place of Cuba within the growing informal U.S. empire, trade relations with the South American nations, the impact of the Cold War on the hemisphere, the role of the CIA in destabilizing and overthrowing popularly elected government, and the U.S.

America's rocket ride to the moon was based on the cannonball physics of Galileo and Newton, foreshadowed by Verne's vision of the Baltimore Gun Club, and driven by the needs of the cold war. The Rocket State was an extraordinary amalgam of fact, fantasy, and the fear of Armageddon that had profound consequences for American politics and culture in the years after World War Two.

The interaction of humans with the natural environment of North America since European settlement; the ways in which Americans acted over four hundred years to shape their environment, as well as shared their perceptions of the environment through painting and photography, nature writing, travellers' accounts, fiction, and material culture. (Gen.Ed. HS)

The revolutionary period in the Russian Empire from circa 1900 to the revolutions of 1917 and the mechanisms of establishing Soviet power. The 19th century intellectual and social trends that form the basis of later revolutions. The Russian Empire and the USSR as multinational empires; the non-Russian as well as Russian populations; the differences in their thought and experiences in all revolutions, the civil war, and relationship to Russian power.