History

This course will serve as an intensive historical survey on the rise of mass popular culture and entertainment from roughly 1800 to 1980 and will investigate the ways multiethnic American popular culture (photography, rock 'n' roll, jazz, sports, film, radio, and other forms of multimedia and expressive culture) was influenced by and shaped the American political landscape, race relations, labor, gender, sexuality, technology, and urbanization. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

From "Chinese opium" to Oxycontin, and from cocaine and "crack" to BiDil, drug controversies reflect enduring debates about the role of medicine, the law, the policing of ethnic identity, and racial difference. This course explores the history of controversial substances (prescription medicines, over-the-counter products, black market substances, psychoactive drugs), and how, from cigarettes to alcohol and opium, they become vehicles for heated debates over immigration, identity, cultural and biological difference, criminal character, the line between legality and illegality, and the boundaries of the normal and the pathological.

An examination of the emergence of biology as a scientific discipline since 1750, focusing on the cultural context and social impact of changes in biological knowledge. Particular attention will be paid to changing conceptions of life and how interactions with the physical sciences have shaped the life sciences. We will also interrogate how ideas of biological difference intersected with the normative ordering of humans, particularly along axes of race and gender. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

The junior seminars serve to introduce departmental majors, in the fall of their junior year, to the tools, methods, and interpretations employed in historical research and writing. Students may choose from a range of topics; assignments to specific seminars are made on the basis of these choices at the beginning of the fall term. Seminar topics tend to be cross-national and comparative. All juniors must be enrolled in one of the seminars. One three-hour seminar.

For the first seventy-five years of U.S. history, anti-slavery parties were confined to the radical fringe of national politics. Yet just six years after it was founded in 1854, the Republican Party became the only third party organization in U.S. history to capture the Presidency.The triumph of this new, avowedly anti-slavery was unprecedented: "the revolution of 1860," some called it. But who exactly were these Republicans? How did they rise so far, so fast, and against such mighty obstacles? And what sort of world did they want to build? Using both primary and secondary sources, this seminar will explore these and other vital questions.

This course covers the history of Native Americans until 1838 (the end of forced Removal). It has two central goals: to emphasize the variety of Native American societies and cultures that existed (and exist) in North America, and to highlight the centrality of Native American history to North American history as a whole. Readings will include: the accounts of the travels of Cabeza de Vaca and of John Smith, the Jesuit Relations, the Life of Black Hawk, the journals of Lewis and Clark, several captivity narratives, and Cherokee documents written during Removal.

Research and reading on topics related to economic development and political change with attention to specific national contexts, such as authoritarian state and society in Argentina and Brazil; revolution and social change in Mexico, Cuba, and Chile; problems in Latin American foreign relations. One three-hour seminar.

This seminar examines Gandhi's political life extending from his campaign for the rights of Indians in South Africa to his role in the struggle for Indian independence from British rule. Focus on those historical processes that turned M. K. Gandhi into a major 20th-century figure--the Mahatma. Issues relating to imperialism and nationalism form the context in which the seminar looks at Gandhi's life and seeks to understand Gandhian ideology and its different--often conflicting--historical appropriations. One three-hour seminar.

This seminar situates cultural production in Ba`thist Syria (1970-present)--in terms of its conditions of creation, circulation and reception--within a broader framework, namely, the history of modern Syria. Through an exploration of historical debates in the scholarly literature on politics, aesthetics and culture, students will both contextualize and comment upon ongoing discussions surrounding contemporary Syria. The course engages with a wide range of media, from literature and drama to television and film. All readings are in English, although those with interests/abilities in French or Arabic will be encouraged to exercise them.

Catastrophe reveals the fragility of human society. This course examines a series of phenomena--plague, famine, war, revolution, economic depression etc.--in order to reach an understanding of humanity's imaginings of but also resilience to collective crises. We shall look in particular at how political forces such as empire have historically both generated and resisted global disasters. Material dealing with the especially fraught centuries at the transition between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period will be set alongside examples drawn from antiquity as well as our own contemporary era.

The arts and the media in different cultures. Topics will vary, for example, history of the book, art/architecture and society, opera and nationalism, literature and photography, theater and politics.

Studies of war and society rarely address environmental factors and agency. The relationship between war and environment is often either reduced to a simple environmental determinism or it is depicted as a war against nature and ecosystems, playing down societal dynamics. The seminar explores the different approaches to the war-environment-society nexus and highlights how and why the three spheres should be studied in conjunction. The objective is to assess how and why environmental and societal factors and forces caused and shaped the conflicts and how in turn mass violence shaped societies and how they used and perceived their environments.

The major Near Eastern abd Balkan diplomatic crises, the main developments in internal Near Eastern history, and the Eastern Question as perceived by the Great Powers. The focus will be on the possible connections between diplomatic crises and the process of modernization. One three-hour seminar.

Considers the developing repertoire of ideas in China to the end of the Chin period, with key philosophical, political, ethical, and scientific concepts treated in terms of their social context and subsequent influence. One three-hour seminar. A prior course in East Asian studies is desirable but not required.

An introduction to the discipline of history aimed at, but not limited to, history majors. Through case studies, students will learn how historians of the last few generations have framed problems, found and interpreted evidence, and built arguments. Participants will both study the major recent movements in the discipline of history and reflect on and improve their own historical techniques. The course will culminate with an examination of history and memory in the early 21st century. Prerequisites: successful completion of the department's junior requirements or comparable work in another department. One three-hour seminar.

The prison is a growth industry in the U.S.; it is also a central institution in U.S. political and social life, shaping our experience of race, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and political possibility. This course explores the history of incarceration over the course of more than two centuries. It tracks the emergence of the penitentiary in the early national period and investigates mass incarceration of the late 20th century. Topics include the relationship between the penitentiary and slavery; the prisoners' rights movement; Japanese internment; immigration detention; and the privatization and globalization of prisons.

An in-depth exploration of a topic in American legal history. In some years the course will investigate an event, such as a famous or infamous trial or case. In other years the course will explore historical dimensions of a particular legal concept, such as "rights," "coercion," "dependency," the "family," or "property." One three-hour seminar.

The course examines the history of financial innovation and its consequences. It examines the evolution of trading practices, bills of exchange, government bonds, equities, banking activity, derivatives markets, and securitization. How do these evolve in particular state or national settings, how are the practices regulated, how do they relate to broader development? What happens as financial instruments are traded across state boundaries, and how does an international financial order evolve? What are the effects of international capital mobility? How is resulting conflict and instability managed, on both a national and international level?

This course critically examines the development of the southern Civil Rights Movement and the rise of the Black Power insurgency from the end of World War II through the end of the 1960s. We will examine historical research, oral histories, literature, documentaries and other kinds of primary and secondary documentation. AAS Subfield: AACL

An exploration of the complex relationship between the making of brain science and the human experiences of brain damaged people. Topics include iconic cases of brain damage like the railway worker Phineas Gage who survived an iron rod perforating his brain, the emergence and historical function of neurological case histories, the study of brain-damaged soldiers in WWI, the "neurological novels" of Alexander Luria, and the popular writings of Oliver Sacks.

A colloquium to introduce the beginning graduate student to the great traditions in historical writing, a variety of techniques and analytical tools recently developed by historians, and the nature of history as a profession.

This seminar offers a history of global interactions roughly since the 1850s, combining an analytical framework with an overarching narrative. It singles out geopolitics, political economy, empire, networks and exchange, warfare and welfare, and oil. Key themes include the Anglo-German antagonism, the U.S.-Japan clash, the rise and fall of global communism, the German story and the European Union, the fall and rise of China, and America's global predominance and partnerships.

An examination of selected subjects in early Latin American history from the apogees of the great Amerindian civilizations, through the years of Spanish and Portuguese imperial control to the rebellions preceding independence. The course emphasizes social and cultural change, explores developments in historiography, and treats a variety of major problems in the field.

Historians of modern North Africa have frequently complained about the scarcity or absence of "local" sources for writing its history. Instead they have often relied on European colonial sources. This course explores this in the context of the voices and testimonies of the oppressed. We first discuss theoretical approaches that aim to recover the voices of such people during pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial times and then focus on specific North African cases, such as slaves, women, "queers", and victims of authoritarian postcolonial regimes.

This course covers some of the major themes in Latin American historiography. It centers on the formation and contestation of different levels of community, from the local to the national, and gives additional consideration to Latin America's integration into global economic and political processes.