History

HIST UN1002 Ancient History of the Middle East. 4.00 points.

The purpose of this course is to introduce you to the ancient histories of the region in western Asia that is today called the Middle East. There we find the earliest cultures in world history documented with an abundance of sources, including numerous written texts, which allows us to study the first attestations of many elements of life we take for granted, such as writing, cities, laws, empires, and much more. The course aims to provide you with a knowledge of the most important empirical data about these histories and to confront you the impact some of the developments made on human life as well as the difficulties we confront trying to study them

HIST UN1010 ANCIENT GREEK HIST, 800-146 BC. 4.00 points.

A review of the history of the Greek world from the beginnings of Greek archaic culture around 800 B.C. through the classical and hellenistic periods to the definitive Roman conquest in 146 B.C. with concentration on political history, but attention also to social and cultural developments.Field(s): ANC

HIST UN1071 History of Christianity from the Origins to the Reformation. 4.00 points.

Christianity is a one-semester introduction to the history of classical forms of Christianity, The Church and society in western Europe from its origins to the 16th century Reformation, with emphasis on Western developments (early Christianity, persecutions, heresies, monasticism, Crusades, popular piety, cults of saints, mendicants, universities, civic religion, mysticism, papal authority, Pre-reformation and Reformation), including its interactive dimensions with Islam, Judaism, distant Eastern worlds, and Global contexts

HIST BC1401 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN HISTORY TO 1865. 4.00 points.

Themes include Native and colonial cultures and politics, the evolution of American political and economic institutions, relationships between religious and social movements, and connecting ideologies of race and gender with larger processes such as enslavement, dispossession, and industrialization

HIST UN1786 History of the City in Latin America. 4.00 points.

This course covers the historical development of cities in Latin America. Readings, lectures, and discussion sections will examine the concentration of people in commercial and political centers from the beginnings of European colonization in the fifteenth century to the present day and will introduce contrasting approaches to the study of urban culture, politics, society, and the built environment. Central themes include the reciprocal relationships between growing urban areas and the countryside; changing power dynamics in modern Latin America, especially as they impacted the lives of cities’ nonelite majority populations; the legalities and politics of urban space; planned versus unplanned cities and the rise of informal economies; the way changing legal and political rights regimes have affected urban life; and the constant tension between tradition and progress through which urban society was formed. There are no prerequisites for this course. Attendance at weekly Discussion Sections required

HIST BC2101 HISTORY OF CAPITALISM. 3.00 points.

The aim of this course is to provide students with analytical tools to think critically and historically about the concept of capitalism. By studying how philosophers, economists, and political theorists have defined and described the concept of capitalism throughout its history, students will be provided with a set of terminologies and analytical frameworks that enable them to interrogate the various dimensions of capitalism

HIST UN2305 WAR IN GERMANY 1618-2018. 4.00 points.

For much of modern history Germany was Europe’s battlefield. Its soldiers wrote themselves into the annals of military history. But it was also a place where war was discussed, conceptualized and criticized with unparalleled vigor. Nowhere did the extreme violence of the seventeenth century and the early twentieth century leave a deeper mark than on Germany. Today, as we enter the twenty-first century, Germany is the nation that has perhaps come closest to drawing a final, concluding line under its military history. This course will chart the rise and fall of modern militarism in Germany. For those interested in military history per se, this course will not hold back from discussing battles, soldiers and weapons. But it will also offer an introduction to German history more generally. And through the German example we will address questions in political philosophy that haunted modern European history and continue to haunt America today. How is state violence justified? How can it be regulated and controlled? What is its future?

HIST BC2321 COLONIAL ENCOUNTERS. 3.00 points.

Examines the shaping of European cultural identity through encounters with non-European cultures from 1500 to the post-colonial era. Novels, paintings, and films will be among the sources used to examine such topics as exoticism in the Enlightenment, slavery and European capitalism, Orientalism in art, ethnographic writings on the primitive, and tourism

HIST BC2401 PLTCS CRIME＆ POLICING IN U.S.. 3.00 points.

This course will examine the historical development of crime and the criminal justice system in the United States since the Civil War. The course will give particular focus to the interactions between conceptions of crime, normalcy and deviance, and the broader social and political context of policy making

HIST BC2413 UNITED STATES 1940-1975. 3.00 points.

Emphasis on foreign policies as they pertain to the Second World War, the atomic bomb, containment, the Cold War, Korea, and Vietnam. Also considers major social and intellectual trends, including the Civil Rights movement, the counterculture, feminism, Watergate, and the recession of the 1970s

HIST BC2385 Global Environmental History. 3.00 points.

This class introduces students to the field of environmental history from a global perspective. Environmental history is the study of the relationship between nature and society over time. It deals with the material environment, cultural and scientific understandings of nature, and the politics of socio-economic use of natural resources. The class combines the study of classic texts that were foundational to the field with modern case studies from all over the world. It addresses questions of global relevance, such as: how did the environment shape human history? How did humans shape the natural environment? How are power relations of class, race and gender embedded in the environment we live in? The class welcomes students from the natural and social sciences, as well as the humanities. The goal of the course is to understand how the relationship between environment and society in history led to the current climate crisis

HIST UN2432 U.S. ERA OF CIVIL WAR ＆ RECON. 4.00 points.

It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of the American Civil War as an event in the making of the modern United States and, indeed, of the western world. Indeed the American Civil War and Reconstruction introduced a whole series of dilemmas that are still with us. What is the legacy of slavery in U.S. history and contemporary life? What is the proper balance of power between the states and the central government? Who is entitled to citizenship in the United States? What do freedom and equality mean in concrete terms? This course surveys the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction in all of its aspects. It focuses on the causes of the war in the divergent development of northern and southern states; the prosecution of the war and all that it involved, including the process of slave emancipation; and the contentious process of reconstructing the re-united states in the aftermath of Union victory. The course includes the military history of the conflict, but ranges far beyond it to take the measure of the social and political changes the war unleashed. It focuses on the Confederacy as well as the Union, on women as well as men, and on enslaved black people as well as free white people. It takes the measure of large scale historical change while trying to grasp the experience of those human beings who lived through it

HIST BC2440 INTRO AFRICAN-AMERCN HISTORY. 3.00 points.

Major themes in African-American History: slave trade, slavery, resistance, segregation, the New Negro, Civil Rights, Black Power, challenges and manifestations of the contemporary Color Line.General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)

HIST UN2523 HEALTH INEQUALITY: MODERN US. 4.00 points.

Through assigned readings and a group research project, students will gain familiarity with a range of historical and social science problems at the intersection of ethnic/racial/sexual formations, technological networks, and health politics since the turn of the twentieth century. Topics to be examined will include, but will not be limited to, black women's health organization and care; HIV/AIDS politics, policy, and community response; benign neglect; urban renewal and gentrification; medical abuses and the legacy of Tuskegee; tuberculosis control; and environmental justice. There are no required qualifications for enrollment, although students will find the material more accessible if they have had previous coursework experience in United States history, pre-health professional (pre-med, pre-nursing, or pre-public health), African-American Studies, Women and Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, or American Studies

HIST UN2535 HIST OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 4.00 points.

HIST UN2587 SPORT＆SOCIETY IN THE AMERICAS. 4.00 points.

This course explores the ways organized sport constitutes and disrupts dominant understandings of nation, race, gender, and sexuality throughout the Americas. Working from the notion that sport is “more than a game,” the class will examine the social, cultural and political impact of sports in a variety of hemispheric American contexts from the 19th century until the present. While our primary geographic focus will be the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean, the thrust of the course encourages students to consider sports in local, national, and transnational contexts. The guiding questions of the course are: What is the relationship between sport and society? How does sport inform political transformations within and across national borders? How does sport reinforce and/or challenge social hierarchies? Can sport provide alternative visions of the self and community? Throughout the semester we will examine such topics as: the continuing political struggles surrounding the staging of mega-events such as the Olympics and World Cup, the role of professional baseball in the rise and fall of Jim Crow segregation, the impact of football on the evolution of masculine identities in the U.S., the impact of tennis on the Second-Wave feminist movement, and the role of sports in the growth of modern American cities. Course materials include works by historians, sociologists, social theorists, and journalists who have also been key contributors to the burgeoning field of sports studies. Thus, the course has three objectives: 1) To deepen our understanding of the relationship between sport and society 2) To encourage students to examine the sporting world beyond the frame of the nation-state 3) To consider the promises and challenges of sport as a site of social theory and knowledge production

HIST UN2611 JEWS ＆ JUDAISM IN ANTIQUITY. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: Students must also enroll in required discussion section.

  Field(s): ANC

HIST UN2660 LATIN AMERICAN CIVILIZATION I. 4.00 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

This course aims to give a portrait of the development of Latin America from the first contact with the Europeans to the creation of independent states. We will focus on society and interaction among the various ethnic and socio-economic groups at the level of daily life. For each class, students will have to read sections of a core text as well as a primary source, or document, from the period; before the end of every class there will be 15 minutes to discuss the document together. In addition, students will enroll in discussion sections held by TAs

HIST UN2671 The Cold War in Latin America. 4.00 points.

This lecture offers a comprehensive view of the Cold War in Latin America and zooms in on those places and moments when it turned hot. It understands the Cold War as a complex and multi-layered conflict, which not only pitted two superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union—against one another, but also two ideologies—capitalism and socialism—whose appeal cut across societies. In Latin America, the idea of socialist revolution attracted a diverse set of actors (workers, students, intellectuals, politicians, etc.) and posed a significant challenge to both capitalism and United States hegemony. We will probe what the Cold War meant to people across the region, paying particular attention to revolutionary and counterrevolutionary events in Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, and Nicaragua, all the while examining the diplomatic and cultural battles for the hearts and minds of Latin Americans

HIST UN2719 HISTORY OF THE MOD MIDDLE EAST. 4.00 points.

This course will cover the history of the Middle East from the 18th century until the present, examining the region ranging from Morocco to Iran and including the Ottoman Empire. It will focus on transformations in the states of the region, external intervention, and the emergence of modern nation-states, as well as aspects of social, economic, cultural and intellectual history of the region. Field(s): ME

HSWM UN2761 GENDER ＆ SEXUALITY IN AFRICA. 4.00 points.

This course examines the history of gender, sexuality and ways of identifying along these lines in Africa from early times through the twentieth century. It asks how gender and sexuality have shaped key historical developments, from African kingdoms and empires to postcolonial states, from colonial conquest to movements for independence, from indigenous healing practices to biomedicine, from slavery to the modern forms of work. It will also explore the history of different sexualities and gender identities on the continent. A key objective is to extend the historical study of gender and sexual identity in Africa beyond ‘women’s history’ to understand gender as encompassing all people in society and their relationships, whether domestic or public.

HIST UN2851 Making Modern Korea. 4.00 points.

This course explores Korea’s history from the late nineteenth century to the present with a particular focus on caste/class, gender, war and industrialization. Using primary and secondary texts as well as documentary film and literary ephemera, the seminar analyses such topics as the relationship between imperialism and rebellions in the nineteenth century; the uneven experience of Japanese colonial rule; Korea’s early feminist movement; how North Korea became a communist society; the deep scars of the Korean War; cultures of industrialism in South and North Korea; counter-cultural movements in 1970s, 1980s and 1990s South Korea; and contemporary challenges facing the peninsula. This course will give students a thorough grounding in modern Korean history and introduce them to major interpretative currents in the study of Korean history

HIST UN2972 Unsettling Science. 4.00 points.

Unsettling Science invites students to do exactly that: ask big questions about science and interrupt preconceived ideas about what science is and who does it. This course is an introductory dive into the interplay between science, technology, health, environment, and society. By offering deep historical and contemporary perspectives, this course equips students with skills essential to critically exploring not only longstanding questions about the world but also urgent issues of our time. Unsettling Science will provide students with the critical and methodological tools to think creatively about local and global challenges and develop interventions. To do so, the course focuses on a series of fundamental questions that underpin the study of science and society from a variety of perspectives

HIST UN2978 Science and Pseudoscience: Alchemy to AI. 4.00 points.

During the 2020 US presidential election and the years of the COVID-19 pandemic, science and “scientific truths” were fiercely contested. This course provides a historical perspective on the issues at stake. The course begins with an historical account of how areas of natural knowledge, such as astrology, alchemy, and “natural magic,” which were central components of an educated person’s view of the world in early modern Europe, became marginalized, while a new philosophy of nature (what we would now call empirical science) came to dominate the discourse of rationality. Historical developments examined in this course out of which this new understanding of nature emerged include the rise of the centralized state, religious reform, and European expansion. The course uses this historical account to show how science and pseudoscience developed in tandem in the period from 1400 to 1800. This historical account equips students to examine contemporary issues of expertise, the social construction of science, pluralism in science, certainty and uncertainty in science, as well as critical engagement with contemporary technologies

HIST BC2980 WORLD MIGRATION. 3.00 points.

Overview of human migration from pre-history to the present. Sessions on classical Rome; Jewish diaspora; Viking, Mongol, and Arab conquests; peopling of New World, European colonization, and African slavery; 19th-century European mass migration; Chinese and Indian diasporas; resurgence of global migration in last three decades, and current debates

HIST UN3009 Cities and Slavery in the Atlantic World. 4 points.

Although African slavery in the Americas is most often associated with rural life and agricultural production, cities were crucial sites in the history of slavery. This undergraduate seminar explores the intertwined histories of urbanization and slavery in the Atlantic world from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.

Readings and discussions will touch on slavery’s impact on such European centers as Nantes, Liverpool, London, and Seville and on African cities but will concentrate on the “New World,” eventually coming to focus on the places where slavery lasted long enough to intersect with the beginnings of urban modernity and industrialization: Cuba and especially Brazil. We will end the semester reading and reflecting on the lasting legacies of African slavery in the cities of the Atlantic world after abolition, considering both slavery’s memorialization on and erasure from the urban landscape.

HIST UN3023 Mobility and Identity in the Roman World. 4.00 points.

This course considers how identity increased, limited, controlled, or otherwise shaped the mobility of individuals and groups in the Roman world, including women, slaves, freedpeople, and diaspora communities. We will identify the structures that produced differences in mobility and consider how such groups understood and represented themselves in a variety of media as possessing a specific, shared identity and community. The course will draw on a range of primary sources, including inscriptions and literary texts (both poetry and prose), and cover the period from the second century BCE to the third century CE

HIST UN3030 IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP IN AMER HIST. 4.00 points.

This course explores the meaning of American citizenship in connection with the country’s immigration history. Topics include historic pathways to citizenship for migrants; barriers to citizenship including wealth, race, gender, beliefs and documentation; and critical issues such as colonialism, statelessness, dual nationality, and birthright citizenship. We will ask how have people become citizens and under what authority has that citizenship been granted? What are the historic barriers to citizenship and how have they shifted over time? What major questions remain unanswered by Congress and the Supreme Court regarding the rights of migrants to attain and retain American citizenship?

HIST BC3199 Queer and Trans Histories of Europe since the Middle Ages. 4.00 points.

This seminar challenges students to consider “queer” and “trans” as categories of both experience and analysis in the historical record. We will first take on the theoretical framing of terms such as “queer” and “trans” and question their meaning and usefulness in a historical context. We will consider how we, as historians, can access the past so often rendered invisible in the archives. The course will also seek to understand dominant narratives of gender and sexuality in various periods and contexts in Europe, and then explore what it looked like when individuals and communities acted in ways that did not align with contemporary expectations

HIST BC3327 CONSUMER CULTURE IN MOD EUROPE. 3.00 points.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
The development of the modern culture of consumption, with particular attention to the formation of the woman consumer. Topics include commerce and the urban landscape, changing attitudes toward shopping and spending, feminine fashion and conspicuous consumption, and the birth of advertising. Examination of novels, fashion magazines, and advertising images

HIST BC3379 Water Histories: Society, Environment, and Power in Global History. 4.00 points.

This class explores the relationship between water and society in history. How did water shape human and environmental histories around the globe? On one hand, oceans and rivers affected the characteristics and resources of different civilizations. Throughout history, every community depended on access to water resources, developed local practices of water management, and produced cultural and scientific understandings of “water.” On the other hand, human attempts at regulating water flows aimed at controlling life itself, as water is essential for life. Hydro-power, before being a renewable source energy, required exerting political power over humans and nature alike. Grounded in the interdisciplinary approach of the environmental humanities, this class will explore the politics of water management thanks to a wide range of case studies. Starting with the first environmental history of the Mediterranean in the early modern period, we will focus on the last two centuries to examine the roots of the current environmental crisis. By following the politics of water flows, the class will introduce students to key themes in global environmental history, such as the role of geography, climate, race, energy, labor, technology, cities, animals, diseases, and empires in the transformation of human societies. Finally, the class provides foundational historical knowledge to understand the importance of water in contemporary debates about environmental justice and climate change

HIST UN3418 The Carceral United States. 4.00 points.

Examination of the development of U.S. carceral systems and logics from the late 18th century through the present. Through course readings and class discussion, students will explore the changes and continuities in technologies of punishment and captivity over time, interrogating how the purpose and political economy of captivity and policing shifted over time, and analyzing the relationship between carceral institutions and constructions of race, gender, and sexuality

HIST UN3507 A Trans History of the United States. 4.00 points.

This course explores the diversity of gendered experiences across the history of the United States with an emphasis on the individuals, communities, and movements that have been interpreted as trans. The course has three goals: 1) to offer an in-depth survey of the history of trans and gender nonconforming experiences across the history of the United States; 2) to critically explore the emergence of “transgender” as a social, medical, and historical category, with attention to its assumptions and exclusions; 3) to provide experience with critical interpretation of primary sources documenting gendered lives in the past. Key historical themes include experiences of trans/gender in relation to race and colonialism, labor, migration, medicine, kinship and sexuality, legal and carceral systems, activism, performance, media, and technology. Key historiographical themes include: changing interpretations of gender/sexuality by successive generations of historians, identities such as “trans” as both categories of analysis and objects of historical inquiry themselves, the challenges presented by sources that overlook, misrepresent, or obscure gendered subjectivity, and the political stakes of trans history during times of backlash and hostility towards trans communities. Course meetings include discussion of secondary readings and analysis of primary sources, and in-class activities and assignments emphasize developing skills to identify, analyze, and use a wide range of sources to understand shifting frameworks of gender throughout US history. No prerequisites necessary

HIST UN3571 Left and Right in American History. 4.00 points.

This course examines 20th-century American political movements of the Left and Right. We will cover Socialism and the Ku Klux Klan in the early twentieth century; the Communist Party and right-wing populists of the 1930s; the civil rights movement, black power, and white resistance, 1950s-1960s; the rise of the New Left and the New Right in the 1960s; the Women's liberation movement and the Christian right of the 1970s; and finally, free-market conservatism, neoliberalism, white nationalism and the Trump era. We will explore the organizational, ideological and social history of these political mobilizations. The class explores grass-roots social movements and their relationship to “mainstream” and electoral politics. We will pay special attention to the ways that ideas and mobilizations that are sometimes deemed extreme have in fact helped to shape the broader political spectrum. Throughout the semester, we will reflect on the present political dilemmas of our country in light of the history that we study

HIST BC3589 Anti-Apartheid Solidarity Movement. 4.00 points.

This course examines the struggle against South African apartheid with a particular focus on the global solidarity movement in the 20th century. The class will examine key turning points in the movement, its connection with broader anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles, gendered constructs of apartheid and feminist leadership in the movement, and the circulation of theories of racial capitalism. Students will understand how and why apartheid became a global concern. Students will work on a project using the primary source material available on the African Activist Archive Digital Project at Michigan State University

HIST UN3712 African Climate and History. 4.00 points.

This course examines how Africa’s climate has changed in the past and with what consequences for the people living on the continent. It looks at the scope, duration and intensity of past climate events and their impacts, while using these historical climate events to teach fundamental climate concepts. Central to the course is the human experience of these events and the diversity of their responses. The major question underpinning this course is, therefore, how have people responded to past climate events, whether short-term, decadal or longer in scope? This question is predicated on the complexity of human society and moves away from the binary of collapse vs. resilience that dominates much thinking about the impact of climate changes on past societies. This framing recognizes the significance of climate for food production and collection, as well as trade and cosmologies. It does not take climate to be the determining factor in history. Rather it foregrounds the myriad ways people acted in the face of, for example, multi-decadal below average rainfall or long periods of more reliable precipitation

HIST BC3788 GENDER,SEXUALITY,POWER,AFRICA. 4.00 points.

This course deals with the scholarship on gender and sexuality in African history. The central themes of the course will be changes and continuities in gender performance and the politics of gender and sexual difference within African societies, the social, political, and economic processes that have influenced gender and sexual identities, and the connections between gender, sexuality, inequality, and activism at local, national, continental, and global scales

HIST UN3803 THE MUGHAL MEMOIRS. 4.00 points.

The early sixteenth century rise of the Mughal authority in North India coincided with the arrival of the Portuguese in South India, the emergence of Safavid empire, and the dominance of the Ottoman empire. Within the first hundred years, even more claimants to imperial power in India – the British, the French, the Rajput, the Maratha – were engaged in political negotiations, resistance and accommodation with the Mughal. We will follow the course of the development of Mughal political thought, economic and environmental impact and courtly culture through to their official demise in 1857. The first four emperors of Mughal India left various accounts for us. Babur (r. 1525–1530), the founder of the dynasty, wrote an autobiography. Memoirs of the second, Humayun (r. 1530–1556), were written by his sister, and others in his army. The third, Akbar (r. 1556–1605) was the subject of the most amazing regnal history-- written by his minister and aide Abu'l Fazl. His son Jahangir (r. 1605–1627), recorded his daily activities and thoughts in his own journal that was published by him. To best engage with this complex universe, we will use the semantic vocabulary of ‘seeing’. This course will delve into how Mughal emperors saw their world and how they narrated it. This course is almost exclusively focused on primary readings. We will read large portions of the texts written by the Mughal elite. We will read them to examine their treatment of sacral landscape, nature and environment, gender, social networks, power and violence, agency and interiority, performativity, usage of history and memory. This focus on memoir and autobiographical writing would allow us to delve far deeply into the socio-cultural worlds of the Mughal then is possible via a perfunctory reading of secondary sources

HIST BC3870 GENDER＆ MIGRATN:GLOBAL PERSPC. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required. Sophomore Standing. Explores migration as a gendered process and what factors account for migratory differences by gender across place and time; including labor markets, education demographic and family structure, gender ideologies, religion, government regulations and legal status, and intrinsic aspects of the migratory flow itself

HIST UN3927 Global Histories of Plants and Empire, c. 1500-1800. 4.00 points.

This course provides a broad introduction to global history as it relates to science, medicine, and empire. In particular, we will explore the relationships between plants and empires in the early modern period. The course will predominantly focus on the colonial empires of early modern Europe (the Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, French, and British), but will also incorporate case studies from the Mughal, Ottoman, Qing, and Russian empires. Broadly, we will analyze how much the desire for particular plants influenced and motivated imperial projects and assess the impacts of these projects on the natural world. We will evaluate the ways in which plants and knowledge about plants traveled, or failed to travel, and the labor involved in these processes in the context of empire. Finally, we will think about the shifting meanings and uses of plants over time and how this impacts our study of them

HIST GU4218 The Black Sea in History. 4 points.

      We are used to thinking of history in national terms, or at least in reference to major civilizations (“Western civilization,”  “Near Eastern civilization,” etc.). In  “real life,” however, interactions among people, linguistic communities, and cultures frequently cut across political divisions. Water – rivers, streams, seas – is often an invitation to settlement, commerce, and conquest. This course offers a look (inspired in part by Fernand Braudel's Mediterranean) at a body of water – the Black Sea – and the lands around it, in sweeping historical perspective. Focus is on those moments when the various civilizations and empires that originated and flourished around the Black Sea met and intersected in friendship or in enmity. We will look at ancient civilizations, Greek colonization, Byzantine-Slav interactions, the period of Ottoman dominance, Russian-Turkish rivalry, and decolonization and wars in the 19th and 20th centuries. We hope that we will be able to pay particular attention to questions of ecology, language, religion, and cultural interaction throughout.

HIST GU4298 Food in Modern East Central Europe: A Cultural and Political History. 4.00 points.

Food is life – says a banal truism. It is the foundation of biological existence, and producing, creating and savoring food pervades life from the cradle to the last breath. It is everywhere from the campfire to picture galleries and philosophy books. It is material and symbolic, emotional and calculated. It is a glue and a dividing line between people. Food is history. Both as a prominent or an almost invisible thread running through life, food is more than itself, a lens on how society changed through history. This course uses food as a social phenomenon to highlight differences and commonalities of the region called East Central Europe without and within. It reflects upon the numerous faces of food, how its changes, its use, creation, consumption, and study mirrors broader historical developments and how it serves as focus of attachments known from contemporary politics: national, local, regional. Following food in East Central European history offers not only an analysis of food and its function within society, but how food has changed with society too. Throughout the course we shall explore the different – material, cultural, political, class – meanings of food, while introducing perspectives from different academic disciplines like social and political history, sociology, nationalism studies, anthropology. We start from the material, and through the concepts of food culture and food ways we shall connect the symbolic and practical aspects of food. After exploring how technology and science changed food and how it is related to modernity, we shall delve into the cultural and political: how does food reflect and represent various differences, how it is used to symbolize the immaterial. Finally, as East Central European food history is anything but peculiar, we will use food to think about the possible meanings of this geographic concept

HIST GU4363 Pascal and the Modern Self. 4.00 points.

This seminar will focus particularly on Pascal’s humanistic case for religious faith as a response to Montaigne’s skeptical portrayal of the self. The aim is to understand all the implications of this encounter for the history of Western thought about human psychology, religion, and politics

HIST GU4374 Welfare States and Warfare States, Europe and the United States since c. 1870. 4.00 points.

What kind of protection does a state owe its citizens? In the early twentieth century, states across Europe and the United States developed a whole host of social benefits that sought to protect some citizens against the risks of modern industrial society: against accidents, old age, widowhood, motherhood, and illness. Yet any observer will immediately notice that this exact period of state expansion was also the era of high imperialism, in which labor markets were segregated by gender and race, citizenship rights were limited, fascism was on the rise, and the world waged global war. What, then, was the relationship between welfare states and warfare states in Europe and the United States? In this class, we will read about the evolution of social policies and social politics across the globe since the 1870s, from imperial expansion and welfare in the Boer War to migration politics in the contemporary European Union. We will examine how welfare states developed under pressure from new social movements and in response to new social and economic problems. We will interrogate whether welfare entrenched, or alleviated, social exclusions around race, gender, disability, and class. We will consider when states become invested in the health and wellbeing of their citizens and why. Finally, we will evaluate the impact of empire, war, and decolonization on the rise and, perhaps, the fall of welfare state. That is, in this class we will ask: if, as the famous phrase goes, war made the state, did war make the welfare state too?

HIST GU4389 Stalinism. 4.00 points.

The quarter century during which Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union witnessed some of the twentieth century's most dramatic events: history's fastest plunge into modernity, an apocalyptic world war, and the emergence of a socialist state as a competitive world power. This tutorial will offer students a deep dive not only into the historical depths of the Stalin era but into the gloriously complex historiographical debates that surround it. Some of the questions that will animate the readings, writings, and discussions that students will engage in are as follows: Did Stalin depart from or represent a continuation of the policies introduced by his predecessor Vladimir Lenin? Did he rule in a totalitarian fashion or in ways comparable to other twentieth century regimes? Were his policies destructive or possibly productive? And perhaps most boggling of all: why did no one resist Stalinist rule?

HIST GU4426 PEOPLE OF THE OLD SOUTH. 4.00 points.

No place or period in American history has ignited more passion or brought into being a richer trove of first-rate scholarship than the South during the years before the Civil War. On the other hand, no place or period in American history has generated more misguided scholarship or more propaganda. In this course, students will sample historical literature and primary sources about the Old South, evaluating the interpretations historians have offered and scrutinizing some of the documents on which historians of the Old South have based their conclusions

HIST GU4435 Democracy and its Technocrats. 4.00 points.

Science and technology have become increasingly central to the basic functioning of democratic societies The administrative state, both on the local and national level, is dependent on technological systems to ensure democratic rule and deliver services: from voting machines and welfare databases to passport scanners and the laboratory equipment necessary to set environmental standards. Just as necessary are the numerous experts – engineers, statisticians, epidemiologists, and environmental scientists – who either work for or advise the state in its dealings. How should we think about the technocratic nature of modern democracy? Is it an inevitable and necessary pre-condition for governing modern mass society? Or is it an alarming aspect, an undemocratic impulse, that undermines the promise of democratic rule?The course will examine the coproduction of science and politics. In the first part of the semester, students will gain conceptual tools with which to rethink the connection between science, technology, power, politics, policy, and democracy. They will consider the role of expertise in modern politics, as well as the construction of the public. In the second part of the semester we will consider in greater detail the way technocratic governance developed in the United States from the end of the nineteenth century to the contemporary moment

HIST GU4518 Research Seminar: Columbia and Slavery. 4 points.

In this course, students will write original, independent papers of around 25 pages, based on research in both primary and secondary sources, on an aspect of the relationship between Columbia College and its colonial predecessor King's College, with the institution of slavery.

HIST GU4641 HOLOCAUST GENOCIDE-AMER CULTRE. 4.00 points.

When the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. opened in 1993, some people asked why a "European" catastrophe was being memorialized alongside shrines to Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln while there was still no museum documenting the experience of African slaves in the United States or the effort to exterminate the Native Americans on this continent. How American intellectuals have thought about the Nazi regime and the Holocaust in Europe since before the Second World War and in the latter half of the twentieth century is te focus on this course. The course will also compare the ways the United States narrates, conceptualizes and deals with the Holocaust as oppsed to other genocidal events. This course is comparative at its core as it examines how intellectuals and institutions spanning from Hannah Arendt to the United Nations to the US Holocaust Museum have woven this event into American culture

HIST GU4681 The Nahuas Through Their Sources. 4.00 points.

This seminar aims to give a basic knowledge of the history, society, and culture of the Nahuas, one of the main Indigenous groups of Mexico, during the early period, 16th-18th centuries. The Nahuas left a vast and varied corpus of documents written in Nahuatl, a language still in use today. In each class, we will be reading a different set of documents available both in Nahuatl and in English translation and analyze them together to get an understanding of the Nahua world from within. To help us in this analysis, we will be reading also academic works by experts in the field of Indigenous history of early Latin America. Thanks to a collaboration with Eduardo de la Cruz, director of IDIEZ (Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas) and a native-speaker instructor of Nahuatl, we will have the possibility to learn how Nahuatl is spoken today and how Indigenous people read their own primary sources from the past. The course will have at least one activity with professor de la Cruz built in the class time and accessible via Zoom

HIST GU4721 Archaeology and Heritage in the Ottoman Lands in the Long 19th Century. 4.00 points.

“Archaeology and Heritage in the Ottoman Lands” is an undergraduate/graduate seminar focusing on archaeology, museology, and the notion of heritage throughout the lands under Ottoman rule during the ‘long’ nineteenth century. The objective is to critically reassess the nature of Western antiquarian and archaeological endeavors, and to focus on the local dimension of the question to fill numerous gaps and inconsistencies in the ‘grand narrative’ of Near Eastern archaeology and heritage

HIST GU4736 Ottoman Westernization and Orientalism in the Long 19th Century. 4.00 points.

“Ottoman Westernization and Orientalism in the Long 19th Century” is an undergraduate/graduate seminar focusing on the intricate relationship between Westernization and Orientalism in the context of the Ottoman Empire. Based on the assumption that these two concepts cannot be dissociated from one another, it sets out to explore Western/Orientalist perceptions of the empire, Ottoman efforts to Westernize, the emergence of Ottoman Orientalism, and other local reactions such as Occidentalism and anti-Westernism

HIST GU4743 MANUSCRIPTS OF THE MUSLIM WORLD. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: Knowledge of a relevant research language (Arabic, Persian, or Ottoman Turkish) is required to be able to work on a particular manuscript to be chosen by the student. Students who lack the necessary skills of any of these languages but are interested in pre-modern book culture are still encouraged to contact the course instructor.
This course is designed to provide the foundations for exploring the rich and fascinating history of Islamic manuscripts from the 9th through the 19th century. Its structure is shaped mainly by thematic considerations in a notable chronological fashion. The meetings amount to a series of “cuts” through the topic and cover themes such as the paper revolution, authorship, scribal culture, technologies of book production, readers and their notes, libraries and book collections, or textual as well as extra-textual components of manuscripts. Over the semester, we will study key material, textual, and visual elements of Islamic book culture spanning many centuries and continents, and visit major historiographical questions on the millennium-long history of Islamic manuscript tradition before the widespread adoption of print technology

HIST GU4962 Making and Knowing in Early Modern Europe: Hands-On History. 4.00 points.

This course introduces undergraduate and graduate students to the materials, techniques, contexts, and meanings of skilled craft and artistic practices in early modern Europe (1350-1750), in order to reflect upon a series of topics, including craft knowledge and artisanal epistemology; the intersections between craft and science; and questions of historical methodology in reconstructing the material world of the past. The course will be run as a “Laboratory Seminar,” with discussions of primary and secondary materials, as well as hands-on work in a laboratory. The first semester long course to use the published Edition of Fr. 640 as its focus, it will test the use of the Edition in a higher education classroom to inform the development of the Companion. This course is associated with the Making and Knowing Project of the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University.The first semester-long course to use the published Edition of Fr. 640 as its focus, it will test the use of the Edition in a higher education classroom to inform the development of Phase II of the Making and Knowing Project - a Research and Teaching Companion. Students’ final projects (exploratory and experimental work in the form of digital/textual analysis of Ms. Fr. 640, reconstruction insight reports, videos for the Companion, or a combination) will be published as part of the Companion or the Sandbox depending on content and long-term maintenance considerations

AFRS BC2004 INTRODUCTN TO AFRICAN STUDIES. 3.00 points.

Interdisciplinary and thematic approach to the study of Africa, moving from pre-colonial through colonial and post-colonial periods to contemporary Africa. Focus will be on its history, societal relations, politics and the arts. The objective is to provide a critical survey of the history as well as the continuing debates in African Studies

HSWM UN2761 GENDER ＆ SEXUALITY IN AFRICA. 4.00 points.

This course examines the history of gender, sexuality and ways of identifying along these lines in Africa from early times through the twentieth century. It asks how gender and sexuality have shaped key historical developments, from African kingdoms and empires to postcolonial states, from colonial conquest to movements for independence, from indigenous healing practices to biomedicine, from slavery to the modern forms of work. It will also explore the history of different sexualities and gender identities on the continent. A key objective is to extend the historical study of gender and sexual identity in Africa beyond ‘women’s history’ to understand gender as encompassing all people in society and their relationships, whether domestic or public.

CSER UN3928 COLONIZATION/DECOLONIZATION. 4.00 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement
Enrollment limited to 22.

Prerequisites: Open to CSER majors/concentrators only. Others may be allowed to register with the instructor's permission.
Prerequisites: Open to CSER majors/concentrators only. Others may be allowed to register with the instructors permission. This course explores the centrality of colonialism in the making of the modern world, emphasizing cross-cultural and social contact, exchange, and relations of power; dynamics of conquest and resistance; and discourses of civilization, empire, freedom, nationalism, and human rights, from 1500 to 2000. Topics include pre-modern empires; European exploration, contact, and conquest in the new world; Atlantic-world slavery and emancipation; and European and Japanese colonialism in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The course ends with a section on decolonization and post-colonialism in the period after World War II. Intensive reading and discussion of primary documents

AMST UN3930 Topics in American Studies. 4 points.

Please refer to the Center for American Studies website for course descriptions for each section. americanstudies.columbia.edu

AMST UN3931 Topics in American Studies. 4 points.

Please refer to the Center for American Studies for section descriptions

EAAS UN3990 APPROACHES TO E ASIAN STUDIES. 4.00 points.

Enrollment is limited to EALAC and AMEC majors and concentrators only.

This course is intended to provide a focal point for undergraduate majors in East Asian Studies. It introduces students to the analysis of particular objects of East Asian historical, literary, and cultural studies from various disciplinary perspectives. The syllabus is composed of a series of modules, each centered around an object, accompanied by readings that introduce different ways of understanding its meaning

SDEV GU4501 History of the Climate Crisis. 4.00 Points.

The climate crisis is a defining feature of contemporary life. How did we get here? This course considers the historical, social, ethical, and political life of global warming in an effort to better understand the present climate age. Themes and topics include: the origins of fossil fuel-based energy systems and the cultural life of oil; the history of climate science and the geopolitics of climate knowledge production; the emergence of climate change as a global political issue; debates about political responses to climate change versus market-based approaches; the question of culpability and who should be held responsible for causing global warming; and the recent emergence of a global climate justice movement and its relationship to racial justice and indigenous rights movements

HSEA GU4720 20TH CENTURY TIBETAN HISTORY. 4.00 points.

    This course is designed for students interested in gaining a broad view of Tibetan history in the 20th century. We will cover the institutional history of major Tibetan state institutions and their rivals in the Tibetan borderlands, as well as the relations with China, Britain, and America. Discussion sessions throughout the semester will focus on important historical issues. Group(s): C

HSEA GU4860 SOC OF CHOSON KOREA 1392-1910. 4.00 points.

Major cultural, political, social, economic and literary issues in the history of this 500-year long period. Reading and discussion of primary texts (in translation) and major scholarly works. All readings will be in English

HIST UN1004 ANCIENT HISTORY OF EGYPT. 4.00 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

A survey of the history of ancient Egypt from the first appearance of the state to the conquest of the country by Alexander of Macedon, with emphasis of the political history, but also with attention to the cultural, social, and economic developments

HIST UN1020 The Romans and Their World. 4 points.

This course examines the history of the Roman Empire from the formation of the Roman monarchy in 753 BCE to the collapse of the Western Empire in 476 CE. At the heart of the class is a single question: how did the Roman Empire come to be, and why did it last for so long? We will trace the rise and fall of the Republic, the extension of its power beyond Italy, and the spread of Christianity. Epic poetry, annalistic accounts, coins, papyri, inscriptions, and sculpture will illuminate major figures like Cleopatra, and features of daily life like Roman law and religion. The destructive mechanics by which Rome sustained itself--war, slavery, and environmental degradation--will receive attention, too, with the aim of producing a holistic understanding this empire.  Discussion Section Required.

HIST UN1942 The Year 1000: A World History. 4.00 points.

This course is designed to introduce students to the study of premodern history, with a substantive focus on the variety of cultures flourishing across the globe 1000 years ago. Methodologically, the course will emphasize the variety of primary sources historians use to reconstruct those cultures, the various approaches taken by the discipline of history (and neighboring disciplines) in analyzing those sources, and the particular challenges and pleasures of studying a generally “source poor” period. The course queries the concepts of “global history” and “world history” as applied to the “middle millennium” (corresponding to Europe’s “medieval history”), by exploring approaches that privilege connection, comparison, combination, correlation, or coverage

HIST UN2088 The Historical Jesus and the Origin of Christianity. 4 points.

The goal of this course will be to subject the source materials about Jesus and the very beginnings of Christianity (before about 150 CE) to a strictly historical-critical examination and analysis, to try to understand the historical underpinnings of what we can claim to know about Jesus, and how Christianity arose as a new religion from Jesus' life and teachings. In addition, since the search or quest for the "historical Jesus" has been the subject of numerous studies and books in recent times, we shall examine a selection of prominent "historical Jesus" works and theories to see how they stand up to critical scrutiny from a historical perspective.

HIST UN2100 EARLY MOD EUR: PRINT ＆ SOCIETY. 4.00 points.

This course will examine key cultural, political, and religious developments in early modern Western Europe (c. 1500-1800) using the lens of print technology and culture as entry point. From the Reformation of Luther, to the libelles of pre-revolutionary France, from unlocking the mysteries of the human body to those of the heavens, from humanist culture to the arrival of the novel, no important aspect of European culture in the early modern centuries can be understood without taking into account the role of print. Its material aspects, its marketing and distribution channels, and its creation of new readers and new “republics” form the contours of this course

HIST UN2215 MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORY. 4.00 points.

An introductory survey of the history of Russia, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union over the last two centuries. Russia’s role on the European continent, intellectual movements, unfree labor and emancipation, economic growth and social change, and finally the great revolutions of 1905 and 1917 define the “long nineteenth century.” The second half of the course turns to the tumultuous twentieth century: cultural experiments of the 1920s, Stalinism, World War II, and the new society of the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years. Finally, a look at very recent history since the East European revolutions of 1989-91. This is primarily a course on the domestic history of Russia and the USSR, but with some attention to foreign policy and Russia’s role in the world

HIST UN2353 Shadow of the Sun King: Early Modern France. 4.00 points.

This course will offer a survey of French history from the Wars of Religion to the Revolution, when the kingdom was the predominant power in Europe. Topics to be addressed include the rise of the Bourbon monarchy, the crystallization of absolutism as a political theology, the spectacular rise and collapse of John Law’s financial system, the emergence of the philosophe movement during the Enlightenment, and the gradual de-legitimation of royal power through its association with despotism. Thematically, the course will focus on shifting logics of representation—that is, the means by which political, economic, and religious power was not only reflected, but also generated and projected, through a range of interrelated practices that include Catholic liturgy, courtly protocols, aristocratic codes of honor, financial experimentation, and the critical styles of thinking and reading inculcated by the nascent public sphere

HIST UN2438 POLITICAL HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY AFRICA. 3.00 points.

This course offers a survey of the political history of contemporary Africa, from independence to the present day, with a focus on the states and societies south of the Sahara. We will use the tools of historians to study African political life: who held political power; how they wielded it and to what ends; and what kinds of opposition they faced. An important sub-theme involves American policy and actions, including those of civil society organizations, vis-à-vis African nation-states

HIST UN2444 THE VIETNAM WAR. 4.00 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

Prerequisites: Register for discussion section HIST UN2445
April 30, 2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. Upon the semicentennial, this special edition lecture course will reflect on the half century of scholarship and art to examine war’s history, including its origins, evolution, and conclusion, and assess its legacies today. Rather than just view the war as an event in American or Vietnamese history, this course will examine the war from a multitude of perspectives by inviting special lecturers, analyzing primary documents, dissecting novels and memoirs, screening war films, and drawing from the rich historiography of that oft-studied war. Throughout this course, we will ask questions that continue to elicit fierce debate: What brought the United States and Vietnam to war? What impact did the war have on North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, and American politics? How did decisions made in the corridors of power on both sides of the Pacific affect everyday people on the battlefronts and homefronts? Why did it end the way it did? What lessons can we draw from the Vietnam War? Attendance and participation in lectures and weekly discussion sections is mandatory. All the readings and episodes are available online through Butler Library (CLIO) or Canvas (C)

HIST UN2478 US INTELLECTUAL HIST 1865-PRES. 4.00 points.

This course examines major themes in U.S. intellectual history since the Civil War. Among other topics, we will examine the public role of intellectuals; the modern liberal-progressive tradition and its radical and conservative critics; the uneasy status of religion ina secular culture; cultural radicalism and feminism; critiques of corporate capitalism and consumer culture; the response of intellectuals to hot and cold wars, the Great Depression, and the upheavals of the 1960s. Fields(s): US

HIST UN2540 HISTORY OF THE SOUTH. 4.00 points.

A survey of the history of the American South from the colonial era to the present day, with two purposes: first, to afford students an understanding of the special historical characteristics of the South and of southerners; and second, to explore what the experience of the South may teach about America as a nation

HIST UN2565 American History at the Movies. 4.00 points.

This lecture explores major topics in modern American history through an examination of the American film industry and some of its most popular films and stars. It begins with the emergence of “Hollywood” as an industry and a place in the wake of WWI and ends with the rise of the so-called ‘New Hollywood’ in the 1970s and its treatment of the 1960s and the Vietnam War. For much of this period, Hollywood’s films were not protected free speech, making movies and stars peculiarly reflective of, and vulnerable to, changes in broader cultural and political dynamics. Students will become familiar with Hollywood’s institutional history over this half-century in order to understand the forces, both internal and external, that have shaped the presentation of what Americans do and don’t see on screens and to become skilled interpreters of American history at the movies

HIST UN2663 MEXICO FROM REVOL TO DEMOCRACY. 4.00 points.

This course will survey a century of Mexican history that oscillated between an authoritarian regime (Porfirio Díaz’s presidency, 1876-1911), a massive revolutionary upheaval (1911-1920), the construction of a single-party, corporatist regime that became a model of stability and economic success (that of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional), and a complex transition to democracy (culminated in the July 2000 presidential elections but, one might argue, still ongoing). Politics will be defined in broad terms. Lectures and readings will consider social and cultural processes from diverse perspectives. Topics will include: migration and population growth; economic expansion and stagnation; urban history, crime and punishment; gender, women and families; elite and popular culture; labor, agrarian reform; the left, electoral and armed insurgency; relations with the United States and other countries of Latin America. Local and regional perspectives will be offered as an alternative against prevailing state-centered, national narratives. Combining thematic and chronological lectures and discussion of primary sources, the course will examine the most exciting recent literature on Mexican society, culture, and politics. Discussion of primary sources will be an important component of this course. Classes will combine lecture and discussion of historical contents with discussion of primary documents. These documents will include texts (political manifestos, essays, letters, testimonies, legislation, literature) as well as movies, music and visual records (mostly photography and painting). Discussions sections will also use those documents to expand on topics presented in the lectures and the required readings

HIST UN2717 The Ottoman Empire and the West in the 19th Century. 4.00 points.

“The Ottoman Empire and the West” is a course designed to familiarize undergraduate students with the major developments concerning the Ottoman Empire’s relations with the West throughout the ‘long’ nineteenth century, roughly from the end of the eighteenth century to the outbreak of World War I. The course will adopt a predominantly chronological structure but will address a wide range of themes, from politics and ideology to economics and diplomacy, and from religion and culture to gender and orientalism

HIST UN3049 Provinces of the Roman Empire. 4.00 points.

Between the mid-third century BCE and mid-second century BCE, Rome rapidly acquired a Mediterranean empire consisting of territories that it divided into administrative units called provinces. Through the examination of documentary and literary sources, and art and archaeology, this seminar traces the formation and growing complexity of Roman provincial administration and life in the provinces during the Republic and imperial period. Topics of study include the responsibilities of the provincial governor and his staff; the creation of provincial landscapes through the destruction of cities and construction of long-distance roads; the emergence of new provincial identities; revolts against Rome; and provincial expressions of loyalty to the emperor

HIST UN3321 Solidarity in the Age of Decolonization. 4.00 points.

The central demand in numerous contemporary emancipation movements is “decolonization,” irrespective of the presence of a formal empire. This class addresses how we think about decolonization today. What does paying attention to the big picture view of decolonization reveal about the term’s changing meaning? We will look at events, paying attention to how decolonization is perceived by different people, in different places, at different times–not only in the colony but in the metropole. How do “sympathetic” members of society react? What does it mean to sympathize? What kinds of solidarity were formed between metropolitan activists and anti-colonial leaders? What about solidarity-activists in the empire? What counts as solidarity? How does this fit into our understanding of decolonization? These are the questions that will be guiding our course. We will focus our topic by concentrating on liberation from the maritime empires of Great Britain and France (though these are just a fraction of independence movements), starting with the independence of the American colonies and ending with contemporary debates on the notion of decolonization. We will also direct our attention to specific global issues connected to the process of decolonization: the world economy, human rights, apartheid, and transnational protest.The course will be organized like a seminar–there are no lectures, only discussions of the assigned texts

HIST UN3363 Feminist Histories of Gender and Sexuality in Modern Britain. 4.00 points.

This undergraduate seminar offers students an introduction to the histories of gender and sexuality in Modern Britain since the early-nineteenth century. The advent of new nation states, industries, empires, and political ideologies transformed the place of gender and sexuality in British society. Yet the attempt to document those historical transformations changed the ways that feminist historians wrote that history too. This class thus introduces students to the major topics in the history of gender and sexuality in modern Britain: the relationship between industrialization and family labor, conceptions and categories of homosexuality and heterosexuality, the impact of imperialism on gender roles, queer histories of urbanization and the metropolis, and the place of gender, race, and sexuality in the development of the modern state. But it will also ask students to consider how historians like Sally Alexander, Catherine Hall, Judith Walkowitz, Durba Mitra, Samuel Rutherford, and Kennetta Hammond Perry have applied and engaged the major theorists of gender and sexuality, including Frederick Engels, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Carole Pateman, Henri Lefebvre, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Stuart Hall, and Hazel Carby. In doing so, students will learn both the histories and the theories that comprise the feminist historical tradition of Modern Britain

HIST UN3429 TELLING ABOUT THE SOUTH. 4.00 points.

A remarkable array of Southern historians, novelists, and essayists have done what Shreve McCannon urges Quentin Compson to do in William Faulkners Absalom, Absalom!--tell about the South--producing recognized masterpieces of American literature. Taking as examples certain writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, this course explores the issues they confronted, the relationship between time during which and about they wrote, and the art of the written word as exemplified in their work. Group(s): D Field(s): US Limited enrollment. Priority given to senior history majors. After obtaining permission from the professor, please add yourself to the course wait list so the department can register you in the course

HIST UN3562 The Seven Years’ War (1754-1763), Global Perspective: Europe, Asia, Africa, and Americas. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: History Majors Preferred
Prerequisites: History Majors Preferred This research seminar explores the causes, course, and consequences of the Seven Years’ War, arguably the first world war in modern history. Topics include the origins of the conflict in North America and in Europe, the relationship between imperial rivalry in the American colonies and the contest for supremacy in central Europe, the impact of the war on trade and settlement in South Asia, the West Indies, the Philippines, and West Africa, and the legacies of the conflict for British imperial expansion in India, North America, Senegal, and the southern Caribbean. During the second half of the semester, members of the seminar will devote the majority of their time to the research and writing of a substantial paper

HIST UN3591 One Person, One Vote?. 4.00 points.

In recent years, the American public has ranked worries over the future of American democracy among its top concerns. American citizens consider free and fair elections to be the bedrock of U.S. representative democracy. However, for most of U.S. history, there has been a profound gap between the ideals of democratic representation and its reality, with many Americans being disenfranchised. This course will examine the history of efforts to secure voting rights for U.S. citizens, including women and people of color, as well as continuing attempts to curtail or suppress these rights. Further, we will survey how debates over voting rights intersected with conflicts over the nature of political representation, and how the ideal of “fair representation” has been construed and fought over during the 20th century. Topics will include: the nineteenth amendment, Jim Crow disenfranchisement in the U.S. South, the Voting Rights Act, histories of apportionment and redistricting, as well as fights over the electoral college

HIST UN3608 Women and Gender in Latin America and the Caribbean. 4.00 points.

This course examines women’s experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean from colonial times to current days. We will investigate debates on class, race, religion and ethnicity while looking at major historical events. We will rely on several primary and secondary sources such as archival documents, oral histories, arts and visual resources that will help us understand how gender shaped the political, social, and economic structures of Latin America and the Caribbean. We will also learn about important women, such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Chica da Silva, examine the role of women warriors and spies in the Wars of Independence and the Haitian Revolution, and discuss how multiple gender-based issues are deeply tied to the history of Latin America and the Caribbean, such as indigenous gender systems, Catholicism and education, female suffrage, feminism and populism, conservatism, the ideology of separate spheres, the politicization of motherhood, among others

HIST UN3645 Jews in Early Modern Europe, 1492-1750. 4.00 points.

A seminar on the historical, political, and cultural developments in the Jewish communities of early-modern Western Europe (1492-1789) with particular emphasis on the transition from medieval to modern patterns. We will study the resettlement of Jews in Western Europe, Jews in the Reformation-era German lands, Italian Jews during the late Renaissance, the rise of Kabbalah, and the beginnings of the quest for civil Emancipation. Field(s): JWS/EME

HIST UN3786 History of African Muslims: Timbuktu and Beyond. 4.00 points.

This seminar uses the celebrated city of Timbuktu as a starting point from which to explore the history of West African Muslims and their scholarship from the age of the Sudanic empires (10th-17th centuries) through the troubled present in the Republic of Mali. Key questions include the relationship between scholars and rulers, the boundaries of the Muslim community, the entanglements of race, slavery, and religious practice, and the impact of secular governance on the Muslim scholarly tradition

HIST GU4082 Medieval Religion: definitions and concepts. 4.00 points.

In this course, the concept of religion stands at the heart of our exploration, as it shaped and was shaped by the medieval world. We will critically engage with definitions and interpretations of religion, both as a subject of scholarly debate in the study of religions and as a pivotal force in medieval history. The course will examine how Christianity, Judaism, and Islam were not only systems of belief but also comprehensive frameworks that structured medieval society, politics, and intellectual life. Through an analysis of religious texts, practices, and institutions, we will explore how religion was lived and understood in the Middle Ages, while also addressing broader theoretical debates in the history of religion. This approach invites us to reflect on the historical construction of "religion" as a category and its relevance in shaping our understanding of the medieval world

HIST GU4110 FRENCH AMERICA 1534-1804. 4.00 points.

A study of the French Atlantic World from the exploration of Canada to the Louisiana Purchase and Haitian Independence, with a focus on the relationship between war and trade, forms of intercultural negotiation, the economics of slavery, and the changing meaning of race. The demise of the First French Colonial Empire occurred in two stages: the British victory at the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, and the proclamation of Haitian Independence by insurgent slaves in 1804. The first French presence in the New World was the exploration of the Gulf of St. Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534. At its peak the French Atlantic Empire included one-third of the North American continent, as well as the richest and most productive sugar and coffee plantations in the world. By following the history of French colonization in North America and the Caribbean, this class aims to provide students with a different perspective on the history of the Western hemisphere, and on US history itself. At the heart of the subject is the encounter between Europeans and Native Americans and between Europeans and Africans. We will focus the discussion on a few issues: the strengths and weaknesses of French imperial control as compared with the Spanish and the British; the social, political, military, and religious dimensions of relations with Native Americans; the extraordinary prosperity and fragility of the plantation system; evolving notions of race and citizenship; and how the French Atlantic Empire shaped the history of the emerging United States

HIST GU4255 A Global History of East Central Europe Before the Modern Times. 4.00 points.

Looking at Central and Eastern Europe through the systematic application of transnational methods and from a truly global perspective can offer original and valuable insights. Central and Eastern Europe has tended to be a semi-peripheral area in the global scheme of things, and it has thus been much closer to the global average than some of the parts of the world on which much of recent global historiography has focused. Central and Eastern European countries have also developed numerous and still underexplored intercontinental connections outside the Western core that should be of special interest in our age of multipolarity. At the same time, it can be assumed that this diverse area, as a peripheral part of Europe in a formerly largely Eurocentric world. The global history of the region is not intended to exaggerate the role Central and Eastern Europe played in transcontinental processes in the last millennia. It rather aims to show how the diverse people of the region have come to be interconnected with and shaped by phenomena originating in all the various parts of the globe, transnational and global trends that certainly have exerted a much greater impact on their country’s multifaceted history than the other way round. The course does not intend to deconstruct national narratives as such. It attempts to substantially enrich such narratives and reconceptualize them for an age of manifold global interconnectedness. To put it differently, the words “East Central European” and “global” are equally significant parts of the course’s title. It aims to re-contextualize medieval and early modern histories of Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland by looking at global processes in their regional context rather than looking at the region as an exceptional and distinct area. While the region has traditionally been described in scholarship as the periphery of Western Christianity, there has been little understanding of the region as an area with close ties towards the Eastern Mediterranean (Byzantium), towards Eastern Europe (towards the Ruses) and how global processes such as climate change, trade connections, political representation or artistic changes reached (and spread from) the region

HIST GU4279 A Cultural History of the Soviet Century. 4.00 points.

In the English-language literature, the history of the Soviet Union is often dominated by the Cold War. As a result, events central to the lives of Soviet citizens are viewed within a wider geopolitical context that often overlooks regional and ethnic specificity. Cultural products from music, film, dance, and literature provide insight into individual and collective responses to traumatic events. In this course, students study the history of the USSR through the lens of memory and trauma studies by analyzing cultural artifacts as a form of testimony and social history. This course engages with varied cultural products chronologically from the formation of the Union and Revolution through Soviet collapse and the kleptocratic rise of Putin. Materials include poetry and prose by Solzhenitsyn, Mandelstam, and Akhmatova, music by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Vysotski, primary sources and speeches, and historical analyses by Kotkin, Snyder, and Fitzpatrick. To present a de-Russified view of the USSR, materials also include those produced by marginalized Soviet populations like Indigenous and Eveny scholars, Holocaust and GULAG survivors, and veterans

HIST GU4379 Ever Closer Union?: Histories of European Integration since 1945. 4.00 points.

This class offers an introduction to the history and the practice of European integration since 1945. In 1945, western Europe lay in ruins after one of the largest and most destructive wars in world history. By 1957, however, six European governments decided to come together in a European Economic Community and, some sixty years later, they had built a European Union that included twenty-seven countries and, by combined size, constituted the second largest economy in the world. Why would six states just ravaged by occupation and war so quickly volunteer to share sovereignty with one another and why did so many other governments decide to join up later? What kinds of European unification did they envisage, how did these visions of European integration change, and what kind of united Europe did they build? To answer these questions, this class explores the evolution of European integration from the end of the Second World War and the collapse of European empires to the end of the Cold War and the creation of the European Union. We will reconstruct various and evolving visions for the integration of Europe, studying the place of Europe in a world of empires to the place of Europe in a globalizing economy. We will examine the rise of the major policies and institutions of the European Community: from agricultural policy to environmental law, from demands for democratic representation to the regulation of international migration. All the while, we will assess how the European Community responded to the major events of the late twentieth century – including decolonization, the oil crisis, neoliberalism, the end of the Cold War, the migrant crisis, and the rise of right-wing populism – and interrogate the impact of European institutions upon those events. To do so, we will read widely across history and political science and we will make extensive use of new primary source collections, especially those newly digitized by the Historical Archives of the European Union. This course thus doubles as a history of European integration and an examination of Europe’s changing place in the world

HIST GU4385 Rousseau and the Modern Self. 4.00 points.

This seminar is the third in a series on the history of modern conceptions of the self. Other figures in the series include Montaigne, Pascal, and Tocqueville. This seminar focuses on Rousseau, and in particular Emile, his treatise on education and psychology. We will pay particular attention to how he draws from both Montaigne and Pascal to develop a third conception of the self and its development. We also examine Reveries of a Solitary Walker to see how Rousseau’s general theory of the self relates to his understanding of himself at the end of his life

HIST GU4405 The Bible in Early America. 4.00 points.

Anglo-American colonists enjoyed a relatively high degree of literacy, and what they mostly did with that literacy was read the Bible. This course shows how early American culture and the course of American history were shaped by extraordinarily widespread reading and oral transmission of the Bible. Each week will focus on the biblical texts, dilemmas, and crises of a different period in early American history. Topics include Puritan colonization, Native American conversion, Black Bible culture, American nationalism, religious mysticism, and the slavery debate. This course will have an immersive element: in order to better understand the intellectual and psychological effect of constant contemplation of the Bible, students will experiment with text exegesis, memorization, dream analysis, and the interpretation of contemporary events in the style of early Anglo-American Bible readers

HIST GU4532 TOPICS IN AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 4.00 points.

Few events in American history can match the significance of the American Civil War and Reconstruction and few left a better cache of records for scholars seeking to understand its signal events, actors, and processes. Starting with the secession of eleven southern states, white southerners’ attempts to establish a proslavery republic (the Confederate States of America) unleashed an increasingly radical, even revolutionary war. Indeed, as the war assumed a massive scope it drove a process of state building and state-sponsored slave emancipation in the United States that ultimately reconfigured the nation and remade the terms of political membership in it

HIST GU4601 Jews in the Later Roman Empire, 300-600 CE. 4 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

This course will explore the background and examine some of the manifestations of the first Jewish cultural explosion after 70 CE. Among the topics discussed: the Late Roman state and the Jews, the rise of the synagogue, the redaction of the Palestinian Talmud and midrashim, the piyyut and the Hekhalot. Field(s): JWS, ANC

HIST GU4632 Jews in the Ancient City: Politics and Materiality. 4.00 points.

This course will examine the experience of Jews in the cities of the eastern Roman Empire, offering a challenge to modern hypotheses of Jewish corporate stability in that setting and contributing to modern discussions of the relations between the Roman state, Greek cities, and Jewish and Christian subjects

HIST GU4693 WRITERS ON HISTORY: THOMAS MANN. 4.00 points.

This seminar is devoted to examining the work of writers who address the nature and course of history in their imaginative and non-fiction work. This semester we will be exploring the work of Thomas Mann in the context of the First and Second World Wars. This will include his relation to the German “conservative revolution,” the Weimar political experience, and the United States, where he spent several years in exile. We will pay particular attention to his conceptions of modern history as expressed in his novels

HIST GU4695 Urban Waters: ecologies, inequalities, and environmental justice in Latin American cities. 4.00 points.

How does climate change transform how we read, write and tell urban histories? How can the so-called Anthropocene change how we do urban ethnography? How does it affect how we imagine viable, desirable urban futures? Finally, how do we reassess agency, social change, and collective life in the face of challenges brought about by the entanglement of human and non-human actions in phenomena like melting icebergs, air pollution, viruses and pandemics, floods and landslides, or rising sea levels? Addressing these questions requires expanding the temporal and spatial scopes and scales usually deployed in modern urban histories. With this end in mind, we will engage with readings that explore how ports, landfills, pollution, rivers, lakes, pipes and wells, wastewater, beaches and disasters constitute sites of city making in different cities and time periods, and therefore of instituting, reproducing or perpetuating inequalities. We will focus mostly but not exclusively on case studies of Latin American cities, drawing scholarly work in history, anthropology, social and environmental history, urban political ecology, geography, science and technology studies, architecture, urbanism and urban planning

HIST GU4711 OCCULT IN THE MUSLIM PAST. 4.00 points.

This seminar is designed to explore the rich but sorely understudied occult scientific lore in the pre-modern Islamic world. For over a millennium, from the seventh through even the twenty-first century, and spanning a broad geographical spectrum from the Nile to Oxus, different forms and praxis of occult scientific knowledge marked intellectual and political endeavors, everyday lives and customs, and faith-based matters of individuals constituting the so-called Islamicate world. However, despite the impressive array of textual, material, and visual sources coming down to us from the Muslim past, the topic has been severely marginalized under the post-Enlightenment definitions of scientific knowledge, which also shaped how the history of sciences in the Islamicate world was written in the last century. One of this seminar’s main objectives is to rehabilitate such biased perspectives through a grand tour of occult knowledge and practice appealed in the pre-modern Muslim world. Over the semester, by relying on a set of secondary studies and translated primary sources, we will revisit the question of the marginalization of Islamicate occult sciences, explore the actors’ definitions and discussions about the epistemic value of these sciences, trace their social and political implications in everyday life and imperial politics, and examine the key textual, technical, and material aspects of the occult tradition. In several of our sessions, we will have hands-on practice to better familiarize ourselves with the instructed techniques and methods in different branches of occult sciences. We will also regularly visit the Columbia University Rare Book ＆ Manuscript Library to view texts and materials available in our collection

HIST GU4716 Imag(in)ing the Ottoman Empire: A visual history, 18th-20th centuries. 4.00 points.

“Imag(in)ing the Ottoman Empire: A visual history, 18th-20th centuries” is an undergraduate/graduate seminar focusing on visual representations of the Ottoman Empire during the last two centuries of its existence, from the early eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The objective is to study the development of visual representations both by and about the Empire, from Ottoman miniatures to early European paintings, and from the surge of Western illustrated magazines to the local uses of photography. The seminar’s chronological thread will be complemented by a thematic structure designed to explore different aspects and influences concerning the production and diffusion of images: curiosity, documentation, exoticism, propaganda, orientalism, modernity, self-fashioning, eroticism, policing, to name just a few

HIST GU4811 Encounters with Nature: The History and Politics of Environment, Health and Development in South Asia and Beyond. 4.00 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

This course offers an understanding of the interdisciplinary field of environmental, health and population history and will discuss historical and policy debates with a cross cutting, comparative relevance: such as the making and subjugation of colonized peoples and natural and disease landscapes under British colonial rule; modernizing states and their interest in development and knowledge and technology building, the movement and migration of populations, and changing place of public health and healing in south Asia. The key aim of the course will be to introduce students to reading and analyzing a range of historical scholarship, and interdisciplinary research on environment, health, medicine and populations in South Asia and to introduce them to an exploration of primary sources for research; and also to probe the challenges posed by archives and sources in these fields. Some of the overarching questions that shape this course are as follows: How have environmental pasts and medical histories been interpreted, debated and what is their contemporary resonance? What have been the encounters (political, intellectual, legal, social and cultural) between the environment, its changing landscapes and state? How have citizens, indigenous communities, and vernacular healers mediated and shaped these encounters and inserted their claims for sustainability, subsistence or survival? How have these changing landscapes shaped norms about bodies, care and beliefs? The course focuses on South Asia but also urges students to think and make linkages beyond regional geographies in examining interconnected ideas and practices in histories of the environment, medicine and health. Topics will therefore include (and students are invited to add to these perspectives and suggest additional discussion themes): colonial and globalized circuits of medical knowledge, with comparative case studies from Africa and East Asia; and the travel and translation of environmental ideas and of medical practices through growing global networks

HIST GU4842 The City ＆ the Archive. 4.00 points.

How to write the city? What is an archive for writing the city? What liminal and marginal perspectives are available for thinking about writing the city? What is the place of the city in the global south in our historical imagination? Our attempt in this seminar is to look at the global south city from the historical and analytical perspectives of those dispossessed and marginal. Instead of ‘grand’ summations about “the Islamic City” or “Global City,” we will work meticulously to observe annotations on power that constructs cities, archives and their afterlives. The emphasis is on the city in South Asia as a particular referent though we will learn to see Cairo, New York, and Istanbul

HIST GU4872 North Korean History, Culture and Politics. 4.00 points.

North Korea is widely regarded as a country without a history; as enigmatic as it is isolated. Dispensing with this cliché, this course invites students to engage with North Korean history using a variety of primary and secondary sources. We begin in the medieval period to trace the distinct features of the northern region that made it uniquely receptive to outside ideas. Understanding the north as a frontier zone of experimentation and adaption allows us to examine the attractive power of modernity in the north during the early twentieth century via the influence of Christianity, capitalism and communism. Utilizing texts and materials made in North Korea and internationally, including feature and documentary films, women’s magazines, graphic novels, literary fiction and testimony, the course investigates the conditions within which knowledge about North Korea has been produced, circulated and repressed. Key topics to be explored include the history of Christianity and capitalism in Pyongyang and the northern provinces, communist cadres in the 1930s, the allure of the North in the 1940s, the Korean War and the purges that followed, North Korea’s relations with neighbors and the world, and the high cost its citizens pay for the country’s brutal sanction economy

HIST GU4933 American Radicalism in the Archives. 4.00 points.

“American Radicalism in the Archives” is a research seminar examining the multiple ways that radicals and their social movements have left traces in the historical record. Straddling the disciplines of social movement history, public humanities, and critical information studies, the seminar will use the archival collections at Columbia University’s Rare Book ＆ Manuscript Library to trace the history of social movements and to consider the intersections of radical theory and practice with the creation and preservation of archives

HIST BC1302 EUROPEAN HISTORY SINCE 1789. 4.00 points.

Emergence of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary mass political movements; European industrialization, nationalism, and imperialism; 20th-century world wars, the Great Depression, and Fascism

ASCE UN1361 INTRO EAST ASIAN CIV: JPN. 4.00 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

Prerequisites: NOTE: Students must register for a discussion section ASCE UN1371
Prerequisites: NOTE: Students must register for a discussion section ASCE UN1371 A survey of important events and individuals, prominent literary and artistic works, and recurring themes in the history of Japan, from prehistory to the 20th century

ASCE UN1363 INTRO TO EAST ASIAN CIV: KOREA. 4.00 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

Prerequisites: NOTE:Students must register for a discussion section, ASCE UN1366
Prerequisites: NOTE:Students must register for a discussion section, ASCE UN1366 The evolution of Korean society and culture, with special attention to Korean values as reflected in thought, literature, and the arts

HIST BC1760 INTRO AFRICAN HIST:1700-PRESNT. 4.00 points.

Survey of African history from the 18th century to the contemporary period. We will explore six major themes in African History: Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World, Colonialism in Africa, the 1940s, Nationalism and Independence Movements, Post-Colonialism in Africa, and Issues in the Making of Contemporary Africa

HIST BC2199 A History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. 3.00 points.

This lecture course examines the social, cultural, and legal history of witchcraft, magic, and the occult throughout European history. We will examine the values and attitudes that have influenced beliefs about witchcraft and the supernatural, both historically and in the present day, using both primary and secondary sources. This course will pay specific attention to the role of gender and sexuality in the history of witchcraft, as the vast majority of individuals charged in the witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were indeed women. We will also study accusations of witchcraft, breaking down the power dynamics and assumptions at play behind the witch trials, and the impacts of these trials on gender relations in European society. This class will track the intersections of magic and science throughout the early-modern period, and the reconciliation of belief systems during the Enlightenment. We will carry our analysis into the modern period, touching on Victorian spiritualism and mysticism, McCarthyism in the United States, and contemporary goddess worship. We will conclude the semester with an investigation into the role of witchcraft in discussions of gender, race, and sexuality in popular culture

HIST BC2375 Fascism in European History. 3.00 points.

What was Fascism? What kind of appeal did authoritarianism and dictatorship have in interwar Europe? How did the Fascist “New Order” challenge liberal democracies and why did it fail in World War II? What was the common denominator of Fascist movements across Europe, and in particular in Mussolini’s Italy, Salazar’s Portugal, Franco’s Spain, culminating in Nazi Germany? This class examines the history of Fascism as an ideology, constellation of political movements, and authoritarian regimes that aimed at controlling the modernization of European societies in the interwar period. Thus, the course focuses in particular on the relationship between politics, science and society to investigate how Fascism envisioned the modernity of new technologies, new social norms, and new political norms. The class will also explore Fascism’s imperialist goals, such as the calls for national renewal, the engineering of a new race, and the creation of a new world order

HIST BC2477 RACE, CLASS, AND POLITICS IN NEW YORK CITY. 3.00 points.

The objectives of this course are: to gain familiarity with the major themes of New York History since 1898, to learn to think historically, and to learn to think and write critically about arguments that underlie historical interpretation. We will also examine and analyze the systems and structures--of race and class--that have shaped life in New York, while seeking to understand how social groups have pursued change inside and outside of such structures

HIST BC2482 REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA, 1763-1. 3.00 points.

How did thirteen diverse British colonies become a single boisterous but fragile new nation? Historians still disagree about the causes, motives, and meanings surrounding the founding of the United States of America. Major themes include the role of ideologies, material interests, global contexts, race, gender, and class

HIST BC2664 FAMILIES LATIN AMERICA. 3.00 points.

Explores changing structures and meanings of family in Latin America from colonial period to present. Particular focus on enduring tensions between prescription and reality in family forms as well as the articulation of family with hierarchies of class, caste, and color in diverse Latin American societies

HIST BC2676 LATIN AMERICA: MIGRATION, RACE, AND ETHNICITY. 3.00 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Examines immigrations to Latin America from Europe, Africa, and Asia and the resulting multiracial societies; and emigration from Latin America and the formation of Latino communities in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere. Analyzes the socioeconomic and discursive-cognitive construction of ethno-racial identities and hierarchies, and current debates about immigration and citizenship

HIST UN2689 COLONIAL CITIES OF THE AMERICAS. 4.00 points.

This course examines the history of cities in the Americas in the colonial era, c. 1500-1800, organized around three large themes. First, we study the precolonial origins of American urban systems, focusing especially on Mesoamerica and the Andes, and exploring questions of urban continuity, disruption and change, and the forms of indigenous cities. Second, we study various patterns of city foundations and city types across the Americas, examining Spanish, Portuguese, British, Dutch and French colonial urban systems. Third, we focus on the cities more closely by looking at key issues such as urban form, built environment, social structure. Specific themes include a critical analysis of the Spanish colonial grid, the baroque city, and 18th-century urban reforms, as well as race and class, urban slavery, and urban disease environments. 

HIST BC2699 Latin American Civilization II. 4.00 points.

This course is intended to offer a survey of the history of a complex and vast region through two centuries. In order to balance the specificity of particular histories and larger processes common to Latin America, units will often start with a general presentation of the main questions and will be followed by lectures devoted to specific countries, regions, or themes. We will look closely at the formation of class and ethnic identities, the struggle around state formation, and the links between Latin America and other regions of the world. We will stress the local dimension of these processes: the specific actors, institutions and experiences that shaped the diversity and commonalities of Latin American societies. The assignments, discussion sections, and lectures are intended to introduce students to the key conceptual problems and the most innovative historical research on the region and to encourage their own critical reading of Latin American history

HIST BC2859 South Asian Diasporas. 3.00 points.

This course will familiarize students with major debates around questions in the study of diaspora and migration while providing a sense of their interlinkages with large scale socio-political processes such as the globalization of labor, the formation of social hierarchies, as well as movements for survival and belonging. Students who complete this course will learn how to: 1) Use and evaluate primary materials through critical reading and interpretation 2) Conduct close readings of key texts in multimedia formats (posters and ephemera, digital archives, art and cultural production, manifestos, etc.) 3) Evaluate divergent perspectives and representations by combining historical accounts with memory and personal narratives 4) Adopt methods of public outreach and neighborhood ethnography to understand the imprint of the past on the present 5) Present arguments cogently and logically in writing and speaking, including through collaborative learning and presentation

HIST BC2963 History of Globalization. 3.00 points.

Globalization emerged as a concept in the 1990s to describe the various supranational forces that shape the contemporary world. Its history, however, is much older, and it encompasses major historical developments such as the formation and global spread of empires, of trade and capitalism, slavery, and migratory movements, as well as environmental and ecological issues. Processes of globalization and deglobalization affect central categories with which to interpret social, political and economic dynamics such as sovereignty, hegemony, and inequality. This course will offer students the critical instruments to discuss globalizing dynamics and how they have affected human societies historically. We will proceed both thematically and chronologically, to develop the analytical instruments to understand how various dimensions of globalization emerged and transformed over time, as well as the different interpretations that scholars have offered to interpret them

HIST BC2985 History of Global Economic Inequality. 3.00 points.

Economic inequality characterizes virtually every human society, informing deep social dynamics. And yet scholars and lay people alike hold vastly differing opinions about the effects that inequality has on the social fabric, and the need to combat it. The question of how wealth and income are distributed among the members of a national community as well as among nations has acquired center stage in analyses about fundamental issues such as the causes of the progress and decline of societies and the dynamics of globalization. Inequality issues are at the heart of discussions about international economic relations, transnational phenomena such as migrations and the domestic economic platforms of political parties. This course will provide students with the critical instruments with which to analyze the main interpretations of economic inequality from the eighteenth century to the present. We will read and discuss authors who have addressed the question of inequality and distribution: how did they frame the issue? What visions of society emerged from their analyses? We will see how the concept of inequality has changed historically, how different dimensions (e.g., national and international) have appeared and disappeared, and how visions of national, international and global inequality inform debates about the foundational elements of the social compact

HIST BC3370 Science, Environment and European Colonialism. 4.00 points.

Science and colonialism were driving forces in the making of the global and interconnected world where we live today. The history of “Western science” is deeply intertwined with Europe’s encounter with the world, as colonialism provided the laboratory for disciplines such as geography, natural history, medicine, and anthropology. The challenges and opportunities of new natural environments shaped the way Europeans explored, analyzed, and studied nature and society. The circulation of specimens, data, and scientific expertise made colonial governance possible. This course will introduce students to major themes regarding the relationship between science, colonial environments and European empires. Students will develop reading skills and will explore key topics in early and late modern European history, the history of science, and environmental history

HIST BC3399 Urban Histories of Britain, 1600-1900. 4.00 points.

In this course we will explore the social and cultural landscape of urban Britain throughout seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Specifically, we will look to the urban centers of London, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. This period saw large-scale urbanization across Britain and with this urbanization came dramatic changes in the social, cultural, political, and economic spheres. We will map the socio-spatial intricacies of seventeenth-century London, question the notion of an “urban renaissance” in the eighteenth century, and trace the explosion of rapid industrialization in nineteenth-century Manchester. In doing so, we will examine how questions of class, race, gender, sexuality, and nationality played out within the urban landscape. A portion of the course will be dedicated to the development of student research projects

HIST BC3698 Mass-Mediated Politics in Modern Latin America. 4.00 points.

This undergraduate seminar offers an introduction to the study of mass media and politics in Latin America from the early 19th to the early 21st century. Throughout the course, the students will get acquainted with some of the key concepts, problems, and methods through which historians and communication scholars have probed the relationship between mass media and political power in the region. We will define and understand media broadly, but we will focus largely on printed media and, to a lesser extent, radio, cinema, and television. We will discuss both breaks and continuities between different media technologies, journalistic cultures, and political regimes. Knowledge of Spanish is welcome, but not mandatory

HIST BC3791 Lagos: From the Pepperfarm to the Megacity. 4.00 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Lagos: The City Is… the unofficial capital of Nigeria the go-slow capital of the world Rem Koolhaas’ planning mystery George Packer’s mega-city nightmare Above all, as social scientist Margaret Peil once said, Lagos: The city is the people. At last count, over 15 million people to be (in)exact which makes Lagos the second most densely populated city in Africa. How does a city like Lagos come into being? What are its origins? What is its history in regional, continental, and global context? How does it ‘work’ and what work does it do for our understandings of cities, urbanization, urbanism, colonialism, globalization, trans-nationalism, and the spatial factor in Africanist historical analyses? This course examines the many Lagoses that have existed over time, in space, and in the imagination from the city’s origins to the 21st century. This is a reading, writing, viewing, and listening intensive course. We will be reading scholarly, policy-oriented, and popular sources on Lagos as well as screening films and audio recordings that feature Lagos in order to learn about the social, cultural, and intellectual history of this West African mega-city

HIST BC3823 RACE/RACISM/ANTIRACISM: STUDIES IN GLOBAL THOUGHT. 4.00 points.

RACE/RACISM/ANTIRACISM: STUDIES IN GLOBAL THOUGHT Recent protests against racial violence erupting across the United States have demanded that the United States address systemic injustice entrenched in its national history. The Black Lives Matter movement has extended still further, inciting communities across the globe to raise their voices against discrimination and inequality. Rather than viewing the United States— and the north Atlantic, more generally— through an exceptionalist lens, this seminar draws on the strong transnational resonance of the Black Lives Matter movement and the compelling responses of global communities across distinct demographics and colonial histories to decenter the historical origins of race thinking and provincialize its conceptual centrality as a first step in understanding its reach and relevance as a global signifier of “difference” today. How might we develop critical studies of race and racism that are truly global and extend beyond the historical experience of the North Atlantic, and North America in particular? Might we consider the concept history of race, commonly associated with the Atlantic World and plantation slavery as a form of historical difference proximate to other practices of social hierarchy and distinction across the modern world? How can scholarship that addresses questions of black vitality, fugitivity and Afropessimism engage productively and rigorously with questions of colonial servitude and postcolonial sovereignty that emanates from anticaste thought, ideas of Islamic universality, Pan-Africanism, or heterodox Marxisms? An exercise in comparative thinking, this seminar will function as an interstitial home for intellectual engagements in both the Global South and North, excavating linkages between injustices perpetrated through divisions of race, caste, and minority status, as well as the conceptual innovations born from struggles against them. We are explicitly focused on the relationship between worldmaking and concept formation. Questions of historical comparison and conceptual convergence are important. So, too the forms of sociopolitical solidarity and political utopias that have arisen as a consequence of struggles against enslavement and imperialism. Every seminar session will open with a twenty-minute discussion about political and social historical contexts. However, this is a course focused on the close and careful reading of ideas and concepts in a manner similar to courses in the history of ideas and/or political thought

HSEA UN3851 GODS, GHOSTS, AND ANCESTORS: RELIGION IN CHINESE CULTURE AND SOCIETY. 3.00 points.

Examines the social and cultural place of Chinese religions through time, focusing on Chinese ideas of the relation between humans and spirits, and the expression of those ideas in practice. Problems will include the long-term displacement of ancestors by gods in Chinese history; the varying and changing social functions of rituals, and the different views of the same ritual taken by different participants; the growth of religious commerce from early modern times on. Topics will be organized roughly chronologically but the emphasis is on broad change rather than historical coverage

HIST BC3864 Feast/Famine: Food Environment China. 4.00 points.

Food has always been a central concern in Chinese politics, religion, medicine, and culture. This course takes an ecological approach to the provision, preparation, and consumption of food in Chinese history, from the Neolithic times to the post-socialist era today. In examining Chinese approaches to soil fertility, healthy diet, and culinary pleasures, we explore alternative food systems for a more sustainable future

HIST BC3870 GENDER＆ MIGRATN:GLOBAL PERSPC. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required. Sophomore Standing. Explores migration as a gendered process and what factors account for migratory differences by gender across place and time; including labor markets, education demographic and family structure, gender ideologies, religion, government regulations and legal status, and intrinsic aspects of the migratory flow itself

HSEA GU4027 ISSUES IN EARLY CHINESE CIV. 4.00 points.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the basic issues and problems in the study of early Chinese civilization, some theoretical and others methodological. Through the review of a long series of debates the course offers a quick entrance both to this early period of history and to these studies. Organized around problems, the course encourages critical thinking and contesting arguments and helps the students weigh different positions addressing the problems. By doing so, the course guides the students to search for frontline questions and to probe possible ways to solve the problems. The course deals with both the written records (inscriptional and textual) and the material evidence, and the student can well expect this course to serve as also updates of the most fascinating archaeological discoveries in China made in the past decades. The course is designed as an upper-level undergraduate and MA course; therefore, it is recommended that undergraduate students should take "ASCE V2359: Introduction to East Asian Civilizations: China" before participating in this course.

FRHS GU4354 RACIAL HISTORIES OF EUROPE (15th- 21st Centuries). 4.00 points.

After being somewhat eclipsed after World War II, race has reemerged as a central preoccupation in Western European politics, making it more important than ever to understand how the concept and practices have developed and how they have shaped the history of Europe. In this class, we will focus on historiographical debates about race, including how and when it emerged as an ideology and how it has permeated the history of modern Europe. We will emphasize the histories of Spain, France, Britain and Germany. We will focus on a set of connected debates, starting with the relationship between race and modernity. Was race a product of internal European dynamics in the late middle-ages related to the status of Christians of Jewish and Muslim origin or of social relations in the Americas following the conquest and the Atlantic slave trade? How much does the history of race share with the history of capitalism and imperialism? What was the role of scientific and artistic representations in the production of race? How was race connected to class, gender and sex? How and when did it become a central dimension of historical narratives and especially of how Europeans told their history? How shall we understand the relationship between antisemitism and other forms of racism in the longue durée history of Europe? How have historians analyzed the role of racism in the final solution and, conversely, how has race been transformed after the holocaust and into the present?

HSEA GU4891 LAW IN CHINESE HISTORY. 4.00 points.

An introduction to major issues of concern to legal historians as viewed through the lens of Chinese legal history. Issues covered include civil and criminal law, formal and informal justice, law and the family, law and the economy, the search for law beyond state-made law and legal codes, and the question of rule of law in China. Chinese codes and course case records and other primary materials in translation will be analyzed to develop a sense of the legal system in theory and in practice