This course examines both race and racism as elements in the historical process of 'racialization,' and proceeds by positing racialization as key to understanding the political, economic, social and cultural dynamics of the United States. We will outline the basic patterns of migration to the United States from the late nineteenth century to today. Specific topics may include (but are not limited to) imperialism; diaspora; immigrant rights; immigrant labor; 'illegal' immigration; nativism; social movements; and the relationships between gender, sexuality, race, class and nation.

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.

This course explores ecological thinking and changes in landscape through human intervention and natural processes, primarily from the eighteenth century to the present. Our survey of thinking will include Europeans such as the founder of modern ecology, Ernest Haekel, and Americans Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Frederick Law Olmsted.

This course examines Native and colonial understandings of 'place' in the region today called New England. Beginning with indigenous homelands, it investigates Algonquian Indian ancestral and mythic landscapes that rooted Native communities in particular ecosystems. It moves through the colonization period, tracking how European arrivals transferred Old World ideas, agendas, and organisms into new environments. It examines colonists' strategies for exploiting natural resources of the rivers, forests, and coasts, and for developing built environments that made the New World feel like home.

We find martyrs in times of crisis, under tyranny and persecution. Yet not all victims of tyranny and persecution become martyrs, nor are all martyrs victims of tyranny. What social and political conditions have in the past fostered the choice of martyrdom? What cultural values drive this form of self-immolation? What's worth dying for?

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?

A global study of agriculture, forests, and environmental change from 1500 to the present. Topics include the effects on societies and civilizations of climate change, the expansion of agriculture, deforestation and reforestation, state and empire building, and international competition in Eurasia, Africa, and America. Maps and primary sources will permit students to examine global competition, land-use change, agrarian crisis, and sea fishing in the United States and Europe during the 19th and early 20th centuries. A research paper based on primary sources will be required.

This seminar examines the causes and the course of the Civil War, its social, economic, and political results during Reconstruction, and the early roots of both de jure segregation and the civil rights movement. It will examine the process of emancipation from the perspective of social history. Violent conflicts over free labor, the establishment of sharecropping, and the political and economic policies pursued by various groups - freedpeople, ex-masters, northern policymakers, wage laborers, and African American women, for example - will be covered.

This multicultural course introduces students to the visual arts of Asia from the earliest times to the present. In a writing- and speaking-intensive environment, students will develop skills in visual analysis and art historical interpretation. Illustrated class lectures, group discussions, museum visits, and a variety of writing exercises will allow students to explore architecture, sculpture, painting, and other artifacts in relation to the history and culture of such diverse countries as India, China, Cambodia, Korea, and Japan.