(Offered as HIST 436 [US/TC/TR/TS] and SWAG 436) This course introduces students to critical theories of difference in thinking and writing about the past. We will read major works that chart the history of the very concepts of race, gender, and sexuality. We will explore how these ideas were both advanced and contested by various groups over the years by reading primary sources such as newspaper articles, personal letters, court records, and organizational papers.
[TE/TR] Nationalism–by far the most powerful political idea of the past 250 years–has transformed human history the world over. By positing a new form of human identity, it has liberated and enslaved, built and destroyed. Most importantly it persisted by presenting itself as a natural fact of human life. Studying nationalism, therefore, is an act of self-exploration, whether we regard ourselves as national or not. Yet, though nationalism has shaped the modern age, people strongly disagree on its most basic concepts: What are nations? When did they emerge? What is their future?
[US/TR/TS] Often overshadowed by the long 1960s and the conservative ascendancy of the 1980s, the 1970s provides an important transitional moment for the United States, one that arguably linked local experiences to global dynamics and social movements in unprecedented ways. It was also a decade fraught with contradictions. On the one hand, Americans experienced widespread disillusionment with the power of the federal government to promote and protect the minority from the majority. Historians seeking to understand the collapse of the welfare state or the origins of white r
[ME/TC/TE/TS] This course traces the trajectory of the Arab/Palestinian/Israeli peace process over the last 100 years of conflict, examining the early attempts at dialogue before 1948, the various peace proposals offered by the British, the 1947 UN Partition plan, and the post-1948 attempts at a settlement. The course will then follow the development of the peace process after 1967, highlighting the US’s preeminent role after the 1991 Madrid Peace conference and the significance of PLO’s push for a two-state solution after 1988.
[TC/TR/TS] Over the past 500 years, capitalism has become the world’s dominant socio-economic system. Historians have taken many approaches to understanding its rise and the challenges to its ascendency. This course explores these interpretations, using an array of theories and case studies from around the globe. Participants will also investigate the ways that issues of class, race, gender, religion, and the environment have shaped these historical approaches, and we will speak with several of the historians whose works we read.
(Offered as HIST-344 [EU/TE/TR/TS] and EUST-344.) Many see today’s world resembling some features of the world in the nineteenth century. Some powers today claim regional hegemony, attempt to pursue the course of supranationalism, and encounter the challenge of diversity. The course will explore the historical experience of the British, French, German, Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian empires in the nineteenth century by focusing on how those imperial formations met the challenge of modernization and nationalism which included both accommodation of diversity and violent exclusion.
This course offers an opportunity for history majors and students intrigued by the past to reflect upon the practice of history. How do we claim to know anything about the past at all? How do historians construct the stories they tell about the past from the fragmentary remnants of former times? What is the connection between the past as it was lived and the narratives that historians write? How do we judge the truth and value of these histories and memories? The course explores questions such as these through readings and case studies drawn from a variety of places and times.
[AS/EU/US/TC/TE/TS] This course explores the history of scientific disciplines emphasizing the methods, theories, institutions, political players, and cultural movements entangled in their development. Covered fields include biology, physics, geology, chemistry, and meteorology.
(Offered as HIST 284 [AF/TC/TE/TR/P] and BLST 311 [A]) The African continent has been called by one historian the social laboratory of humanity. Art, trade, small-scale manufacturing, medical knowledge, religion, state systems, history, and legend all flourished before the formal political take-over of the continent by European powers in the late nineteenth century. We will explore this varied history of states and cultures in the African past.
(Offered as HIST 283 [AF/TE/TR/TS/P] and BLST 322 [A]) The transition from white-minority rule in South Africa in 1994 ushered in a new era of independence and democracy in a troubled country whose name had become synonymous with “apartheid.” Yet that transition has not lived up to the high expectations of South Africans as many of the ruling structures built by the colonial and then apartheid regimes have endured, and economic and social inequality has increased in the nearly thirty years since Nelson Mandela was first elected President.
