History - Topics Courses

Topics Courses

Fall 2021 / TOPICS COURSES

Julia Bruggemann
HIST 100A: Historical Encounters: People on the Move: Migration in European History
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 9:10-10:10

Why do people move from place to place? In this course, we will study the historical background behind the issues of migration and refugees in contemporary Europe. We will study the migrations within, out of, and into Europe over the past centuries up to today. We will consider a wide variety of primary and secondary sources including scholarly analyses, personal narratives, films, and statistics to develop an understanding of the historical dimension behind the contemporary crises. Along the way, students will get the opportunity to read and analyze texts, identify and develop their own theses, research specific topics, and develop empathy for the 'people on the move'.

Joshua Herr
HIST 100B: Historical Encounters:
Opium Wars: trade, public health, empires, and mythologies in 19th century Asia
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 10:20-11:20

The Opium War of 1839-42 has long been thought of as the beginning of modern history in China. But what really happened and why does it matter? In addition to understanding the event itself, this course will explore the contexts and legacies of maritime trade, ideas & practices of health & the body, and imperial rule & conflict through documentary sources, historical debates, and popular representations. The course will cover global connections between India, China, other parts of East & Southeast Asia, and Europe and the US.

David Gellman
HIST 100C: Abolishing Slavery
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 11:25-12:25

The struggle to abolish slavery was one of the longest and most important chapters in U.S. history. This course emphasizes efforts to end slavery from the Revolutionary Era through the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Major topics include: the origins of antislavery ideology; the gradual demise of slavery in the North; the rise of the nineteenth-century movement for immediate abolition; varieties of resistance to enslavement; and the final destruction of African-American chattel slavery during the Civil War. We situate these events in international contexts and contemplate the legacies and unfinished work of abolition down to our own time. At the center of our unfolding narrative are the life stories of the complicated, courageous women and men who helped to redefine the meaning of freedom in a nation deeply invested in African-American bondage.

Sarah Rowley
HIST 100D: Historical Encounters: Sex & Society in Modern America
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 12:30-1:30

Everything has a history, including sex. In investigating the history of sex in modern society, focusing on the 20^th-century, this course introduces the changing social circumstances that affected the meanings of sexuality in the United States as well as how sex has been regulated over time. We will also consider the politics of sexuality: how differing interpretations of sexuality have been used to deploy power in American society.

Bob Dewey
HIST 100E: Historical Encounters: Boxing in History, Literature and Film
Tuesday/Thursday 7:00-8:30

In this course we will analyze the history of organized boxing, the so-called "Sweet Science" or what Joyce Carol Oates described as "America's tragic theater", through its representations in histories, literature and film. From the implementation of the Broughton Rules in the 1740s to the present, we will analyze the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, social class and capitalism in a boxing context. With a particular emphasis on the 20th century and African-American boxers in the heavyweight division (Johnson, Louis, Ali and Tyson), the course traces boxing's rise to mass popularity and its precipitous decline. You will read the commentaries of literary figures like Joyce Carol Oates, Leonard Gardner, Richard Wright and scholars like Gerald Early and Kasia Boddy. You will critically assess films like Raging Bull, Rocky, Creed, Girl Fight, and Million Dollar Baby as well as boxing documentaries.

Ryan Bean
HIST 100F: Historical Encounters: Holiday in Latin America
Tuesday/Thursday 10:00-11:30

If you love to travel or have an interest in traveling, you should take this class! This course examines the histories of tourism and travel in Latin America from the nineteenth through twenty-first centuries. Following a chronological narrative, the course will begin with the “rediscovery” of Latin America in 1800, tracing the rise of Western travelers to the region and the development of tourist industries (resorts, cruise ships, etc) in the early twentieth century. In doing so, this course is interested not only in the ways that tourism and travel shaped the diverse peoples and nations of Latin America, but also how Latin Americans, themselves, responded to, challenged, and negotiated foreigners’ presence and influence in their respective countries. Throughout the course, we will pay particular attention to the roles race, gender, sexuality, class, colonialism, and empire played in the histories of tourism and travel in the region. At the end of the semester, we will use our historical knowledge to reflect on the ethics and impacts of tourism and travel in our globalizing, modern world.

Bob Dewey
HIST 100G: Historical Encounters: Black Britain
Tuesday/Thursday 12:40-2:10

While contemporary British popular culture acknowledges the contributions of Black athletes, musicians, fashion designers, actors and film-makers, the historic Black presence in Britain has been overwhelmingly denied, “othered” or rendered invisible. Reflecting on his experiences growing up in 1980s Britain, the historian David Olusoga wrote, “It was a place and a time in which ‘black’ meant ‘other’ and ‘black’ was unquestionably the opposite of ‘British’. The phrase ‘black British’ …spoke of an impossible duality.” HIST 200 - “Black Britain” seeks to redress the balance by emphasizing and analyzing the presence and contributions of the African diaspora in Britain from the Tudor era to the present through interrogations of imperialism, race, class, gender, mobility and representation in Modern Britain. Particular emphasis will be placed upon 20^th century events, ideas and experiences including the post-1945 West Indian “Windrush” generation. The course is interdisciplinary, drawing upon scholarship in history, Black and Africana Studies, cultural studies and sociology, among others. The course will also utilize materials from literature, film, art and music to explore articulations of “Blackness” in a British context.

Barbara Whitehead
HIST 200A: The Black Death: Europe in the Plague Years
Monday/Wednesday 2:20-3:50

The period of the Black Death and the Hundred Years War, roughly the 14^th and 15^th centuries in Europe, saw a transformation of European life. The period began in the late Middle Ages, a time when there existed a strict social hierarchy dominated by the militarized aristocracy—the errant knights with their “chivalrous” ways—and ended in the Renaissance with the rise of the wealthy, urban and urbane bourgeoisie, a new class whose very existence was a threat to the aristocracy and their way of life. What part did the Black Death play in this social transformation? What part did the Hundred Years War play? In this course we will look at and question the concept of chivalry, the impact of the Black Death on European culture and life, and the role of Joan of Arc in bringing the Hundred Years War to a successful conclusion for France. This course will be taught as a W course with an emphasis on reading and analyzing primary sources.

Tony Andersson
HIST 200B: Mythbusting Tropical Nature
Tuesday/Thursday 12:40-2:10

This survey uses history to challenge three widespread myths about tropical nature and the people who live there. Together we will explore the complicated reality behind the myths of primeval wilderness, a looming 'population bomb,' and the idea that peasants are ignorant of the environment around them. Each of the myths examined appear in twenty-first century policy debates over environmental conservation, but each has roots deep in the past. In this class, we will explore why these myths have proven so resilient, despite repeatedly being revealed as untrue or misleading, and how their use serves to redirect attention away from the role played by outsiders in degrading tropical ecosystems. Students will use the tools of professional historians to identify these myths in various media and create their own evidence-based stories about past and present environmental change.

Aldrin Magaya
HIST 300A: Pirate of the Indian Ocean
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 1:40-2:40

Who is a pirate, and who could be a pirate? Where do pirates live today? Are pirates real today? Real-life pirates do not fit into many of the stereotypes that Hollywood fiction films have accustomed us to expect. Piracy is a profession that has been around for centuries but has remained on the margins of historical studies. This course explores the history of pirates and sea robberies on the Indian Ocean from 1500 to the present Somali pirate mess. The course uses pirates as a lens through which we can review the history of maritime technology, culture, trade, political unrest, global security, and the processes of “globalization.”

Spring 2021 / TOPICS COURSES

Topics: Historical Encounters: Boxing in History Literature and Film
HIST100A - Robert Dewey
Tuesday/Thursday - 11:40-1:10

In this course we will analyze the history of organized boxing, the so-called “Sweet Science” or what Joyce Carol Oates described as “America’s tragic theater”, through its representations in histories, literature and film. From the implementation of the Broughton Rules in the 1740s to the present, we will analyze the intersections of race and ethnicity, gender, social class and capitalism in a boxing context. With a particular emphasis on the 20^th century, the course traces boxing’s rise to mass popularity and its precipitous decline. You will read the commentaries of literary figures like Joyce Carol Oates, Norman Mailer, Leonard Gardner, Richard Wright and James Baldwin, and scholars like Gerald Early and Kasia Boddy. You will critically assess films like Raging Bull, Rocky, Girl Fight, Million Dollar Baby and documentaries on Jack Johnson and Muhammad Ali, among others.

Topics: Historical Encounters: Unsolved Colonial Mysteries
HIST100B - David Gellman
Tuesday/Thursday - 8:20-9:50

What caused the infamous Salem witchcraft trials? Who was Pocahontas? Were pirates freedom-loving egalitarians or ruthless vagabonds? Did the enslaved New Yorkers conspire to burn Manhattan to the ground? What does the first Thanksgiving reveal and what does it obscure about Indians and Pilgrims in New England? Focusing on England’s seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century North American colonies, the course will probe some of early American history’s most enduring and intriguing questions. Underlying all these questions will be an even more basic one: What was it like to be alive—as a man, woman, or child, Native American, African, or European—in a new world of conquest, community-building, and dramatic social upheaval?

Topics: Historical Encounters: The French Revolution
HIST100C - Barbara Whitehead
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - 10:20-11:20

The French Revolution is best known for its most radical phase when the revolutionary government of France put the French king on trial, condemned him to death by guillotine, and then went on to behead thousands of its own citizens. This period, "The Reign of Terror," has gone down in infamy. How did a revolution fought in the name of "liberty, equality, and brotherhood" go so wrong? Who were the leading figures in this event? Who thought up the guillotine, and why was this instrument of terror considered an advanced, enlightened approach to the death penalty? Focusing on the period 1792-1795, the period of the revolutionary government known as The Convention, this course will seek to understand how, with the best of intentions, revolutionaries and freedom fighters can become terrorists.

Topics: Narcolandia-A Global Environmental History of Drugs
HIST200A - Anthony Andersson
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - 1:40-2:40

Drugs are among the most valuable commodities on earth, rivaling petroleum in share of the global economy. Drugs are emblematic of the ecological transformations that capitalist development has wrought on the planet, yet compared to the energy sector, their environmental consequences have attracted little attention. This class will explore how drugs—their production, trade, consumption, and the policing thereof—have reshaped landscapes and societies around the world. From plantations in the Caribbean and India to the hidden jungle factories of Latin America, students will examine how drugs operate like other commodities, as well as what sets them apart. Students will survey the historical literature on drugs and craft their own arguments about the “place of drugs”—Narcolandia—in the making of the anthropocene.

Topics: Plague in the Islamic World
HIST200B - Nahyan Fancy
Tuesday/Thursday - 7:00-8:30 pm

This course examines the history of the encounter with plague of people living in the Islamic world from 610 CE to 1600 CE. Using primary and secondary sources, we will study how these societies understood the plague (scientifically, culturally and theologically), what was the impact of plague on these societies (demographically, socially and economically), and how these societies responded to repeated bouts of plague (medically, institutionally and politically). The course will engage with recent research in genomics to understand the evolution and transmission of the plague bacillus. In doing so, we will discuss how new research in genetics can help improve our understanding of past plague pandemics, and how traditional historical methods can help improve our understanding of pandemic diseases.

Topics: Sex, Love, and Danger in Latin America
HIST300A - Ryan Bean
Tuesday/Thursday - 10:00-11:30

Sex, Love, and Danger in Latin America delves into the intimate lives of ordinary people from the colonial period to the present, focusing namely on sex lives; friendships; childrearing; bonds of political loyalty and social dependency; and love and sentiment. In centering intimacy and common people—specifically, women, women of color, and the queer community—this course tracks the ways that the intimate realms of daily life in Latin America, far from being benign or apolitical, were deeply tied to the maintenance of gender, sexual, racial, and class hierarchies and, by extension, colonial and state power. In taking this course, students will come to a better understanding of the ways colonial, state, male, and elite power persisted, changed, and endured over time, as well as the many ways women and the queer community negotiated, navigated, mediated, and resisted structural and systemic structures of oppression, even in the most intimate realms of their daily lives. Course topics include sexual witchcraft and love magic; bonds of loyalty, love, and intimacy between a patriarchal king and his subjects; intimacy, slavery, and the struggle for freedom; policing same-sex desire, transactional sex and the policing of women’s bodies; childrearing; domestic relationships, marriage, and violence; and more.

Topics: Social Media and Social Movements in Africa
HIST300B - Aldrin Magaya
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - 10:20-11:20

This course is about how societies in Africa have been using the internet, smartphone, and social media to engage and confront oppressive political, economic, and socio-cultural systems and institutions. We will begin by discussing the historical, political, and social context to understand the different challenges that societies in Africa face. We will then show how social media have provided users and activists across the continent with a platform to share and disseminate information, ideas, organize, participate, and interactively collaborate with other societies in the African diaspora. In doing so, we will explore the emergence, organization, tactics, strategies, and outcomes of the different social movements in Africa. The course also examines the laws and tactics that governments use to obstruct information exchange and social media use. We will discuss the effects of cyber-crime, cyber policing, and surveillance on political participation.

Fall 2020 / TOPICS COURSES

Topics: Historical Encounters: God and Sex: Religion and Culture in Africa
HIST100A - Aldrin Magaya
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - 9:10-10:10

Societies across the world attach different values, taboos, sacredness, and interpretations on sex, sexuality, and sexual relationships. In Africa, although societies saw sex as a normal exercise that every "adult" aspired to engage in, the act, however, was intersected with religion, culture, ritual, belief systems, and customs. The course investigates the historical, cultural, and social contexts of sexual diversity, identity, discrimination, and sexual violence in the 20th and 21st century, Africa, while paying close attention to the influence of cultural norms and religion. We will organize our inquiries around the themes of sexuality and sexual relations, religion, culture, family, and courtship. Some of the questions we will raise include: What counted as sex? What types of sex were considered socially acceptable in different societies in Africa? Who was allowed to engage in them? How did taboos, values, customs, and rituals on sexual relationships change over time and across histories and geographies? Also, the course covers ongoing issues such as HIV-AIDS and the current struggles for the rights of the LGBTQIA communities in Africa.

Topics: Health and Healing in Africa
HIST200A - Aldrin Magaya
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - 10:20-11:20

For many people, the mention of health and disease in Africa invokes images of a collapsing public health system and millions dying from infectious diseases such as Ebola and AIDS. Focusing on the twentieth and the twenty-first century, this course will introduce students to the major socio-economic, political, and cultural ideas that shaped health and healing in Africa. We will use an interdisciplinary approach, mainly historical and anthropological, to examine diseases, therapies, healing institutions, and conceptions of illness among various African communities. Using case studies in Africa, this course will analyze the interplay between colonialism, race, gender, and health. The case studies will help in establishing how the colonial racial apartheid system generated the conditions in which epidemics such as Tuberculosis, Malaria, Ebola, Cholera, and AIDS flourished among the socially and economically disadvantaged African communities.

Topics: Climate Crisis and Social Change from Ancient Mesopotamia to Your Own Backyard
HIST200B - Anthony Andersson
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - 11:40-12:40

Today’s anthropogenic global warming is unprecedented in scale, but climate change is not a new problem for human societies. What can history tell us about the relationship between people and a changing climate? How did societies in the past understand the environment around them, and how did that perception shape their response? Who, exactly, is a climate refugee? What does your class, race, and gender have to do with how you experience your environment? This class explores these questions, and others, in ancient, early modern, and contemporary case studies from around the world. By taking a historical perspective on climate change, students will learn that human behavior is never predetermined by environmental forces—but it is conditioned by them, along with politics, culture, food production, trade, and technology. In addition to historical scholarship on climate change, students will use LANDSAT images, fossil pollen records, and “Cli-Fi” novels to critically assess what it means to live in the “age of humans.”

Topics: The Jagged Edge of Empire: Frontiers in East Asia, 1600-present
HIST200C - Joshua Herr
Tuesday/Thursday - 2:20-3:50

Frontiers are places where ecologies ebb and flow, empires clash, and various peoples negotiate chang-ing ways of life. In the last four centuries, Taiwan, Korea, and many parts of China, Japan, and Southeast Asia became frontiers where the environment and economy were transformed, where indigenous peoples, migrants, and colonizers fought and created alliances, and where new identities were created. The stories of these frontiers are vital to understanding power, resistance, identity, borders, (post-)colonialism, environmental issues, economic modernization, and the future of East Asia today.

Topics: Law, Constitution, and Society in US History
HIST300A - David Gellman
Tuesday/Thursday - 2:20-3:50

Guns, abortion, sex, speech, race, school prayer. Americans often turn their public policy debates into constitutional ones—hoping that men dead for two centuries will be able to resolve questions that defy consensus. Clashing in the present, people on all sides of issues implicitly make claims about history. This course takes an intensive look at the early history of the U.S. Constitution, clearing the historical air and muddying contemporary waters. We will attend to events leading up to the constitutional convention, the compromises made in Philadelphia, intense debates over ratification, and the creation of the Bill of Rights. We will also consider select constitutional developments and controversies in the 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st centuries. Students will research key U.S. Supreme Court cases to investigate how historians work with the law and how justices work with history.

SPRING 2020 / TOPICS COURSES

Topics: Modern Africa
HIST110 - Aldrin Magaya
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - 9:10-10:10

What is Modern Africa? Is it safaris, "virgin" forests, ferocious animals, and bustling cities? Is it “twerking,” sweaty dance floors, hip-hop, and the tranquility of churches during Sunday prayer? Africa is all these things: It is diverse, vital, intense, and rich in culture. This course introduces students to the history of the African continent since 1880. The course provides an understanding of the remarkably diverse communities and cultures of Africa. The course themes examine western imperialism; the struggle to achieve justice, freedom, economic opportunities, and democracy; and the African human rights campaigns. The course carries these themes up to the present by reviewing ongoing issues such as Ebola, HIV-AIDS, and current struggles for the rights of women and LGBTQIA communities.

Topics: Historical Encounters: Abolishing Slavery
HIST100A - David Gellman
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - 1:40-2:40

Topics: Eco-Fascism: A Global History
HIST100B - Tony Andersson
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - 12:30-1:30

Fascist political movements around the world have long placed environmental concerns at the center of their rhetoric and at the top of their policy agenda. In this survey course, students will explore how fear of the Other is connected to anxieties surrounding pollution and habitat loss, and how promises to redeem the “homeland” from the harmful influence of outsiders appeals to some environmentalists who are generally regarded as leaning to the political left. Using primary sources and selected secondary readings, we will discuss topics from the “blood and soil” ideology of the Nazis, through xenophobic anti-immigrant campaigners in the United States and the forced removal of indigenous people from national parks, to white supremacist terror around the globe in order to show the surprising—and chilling—affinity between authoritarian ethno-nationalism and a love of “nature.” This is a discussion-based class that engages with controversial actors and inflammatory subject matter. For environmentally-minded students who care about social justice, it is essential to acknowledge the ways that environmentalism has been, and continues to be, racialized, and how mass violence has been justified on ecological grounds.

Topics: Holiday in Latin America: A History of Travel and Tourism
HIST200A - Ryan Bean
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - 10:20-11:20

If you love to travel or have an interest in traveling, you should take this class! This course examines the histories of tourism and travel in Latin America in the nineteenth through twenty-first centuries. Following a chronological narrative, the course will begin with the “rediscovery” of Latin America in 1800, tracing the rise of travelers to the region—particularly from Europe and the United States—and the development of tourist industries in the twentieth century. In doing so, this course is interested not only in the ways that tourism and travel shaped the diverse peoples and nations of Latin America, but also how Latin Americans responded to, challenged, and negotiated foreigners’ presence and influence. Throughout the course, we will pay particular attention to the roles race, gender, sexuality, class, and empire played in the histories of tourism and travel in the region. At the end of the semester, we will use our historical knowledge to reflect on the ethics of tourism and travel in our globalizing, modern world.

Topics: Climate Crisis and Social Change
HIST200B - Tony Andersson
Tuesday/Thursday - 12:40-2:10

Topics: War on Drugs
HIST200C- Glen Kuecker
Tuesday/Thursday - 10:00-11:30

This course invites us to explore the causes, dynamics, and outcomes of Latin America’s drug wars. Our work will consider the social, political, economic, and cultural scope and scale of the drug wars. We will learn about the role of United States policy in the drug wars as it intersects with internal, domestic factors in Latin America. Our discussion will include consideration of criminal cartels, gangs, migrants, military, politicians, business people, and ordinary citizens, as well as the relationship between formal and informal sectors of society. Several key questions and themes are in play. What is the historical evolution of the drug wars in Latin America? What is the relationship between capitalism and the war on drugs? What is the impact on the nation-state? What happens to citizenship and civil society in the war on drugs? How do people experience the war on drugs in their everyday lives? What are the cultural manifestations of the drug wars? Once the war on drugs starts, why does it escalate, and how does it end? What are appropriate policies? These questions and themes will guide our exploration of the topic.

Topics: Pirates of the Indian Ocean
HIST300A- Aldrin Magaya
Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday - 2:50-3:50

Who is a pirate and who could be a pirate? Where do pirates live today? Are pirates real today? Real-life pirates do not fit into many of the stereotypes that Hollywood fiction films have accustomed us to expect. Piracy is a profession that has been around for centuries but has remained on the margins of historical studies. This course explores the history of pirates and sea robberies on the Indian Ocean from 1500 to the present Somali pirate mess. The course uses pirates as a lens through which we can review the history of maritime technology, culture, trade, and the processes of “globalization.”

SPRING 2019 / TOPICS COURSES

Topics: Indigenous Worlds in Latin America
HIST300A - Ryan Bean
Tuesday/Thursday

This course examines the diverse cultures and societies of Latin America’s indigenous peoples, as well as their social, cultural, and political impacts on the region from the pre-Hispanic age to the era of modern nation-states. In doing so, the course endeavors to understand the past not from an elite or Spanish viewpoint, but from an indigenous one; such a perspective is often marginalized in the writing of Latin American and global histories. By bringing native peoples’ worlds into focus, this class will counter hegemonic, elite historical narratives of Latin America’s past. In this way, the course reveals a far more complex historical reality, one in which indigenous peoples displayed social and cultural vitality and played significant roles in shaping the localities and global structures that constituted their worlds. Using selected case studies from the region, the course focuses on the following topics: pre-Hispanic societies; native religion and the impact of Catholic evangelization; gender and sexuality in indigenous societies; native political strategies in colonial society; the impact of conquest and colonialism on indigenous cultures and societies; the transition from colony to republic and its effect on native peoples; indigenous nationalisms; and native political activism, social movements, and the ongoing struggle for indigenous rights in nation-states. There are no prerequisites for this course.

Topics: Race & Identitiy in America
HIST300B - Sarah Rowley
Wednesday/Friday

This seminar-style course explores how ideas about race and ethnicity in the United States have been rooted in particular historical contexts and how they have changed over time. We will center on the relationship between cultural and national identity. How have race and ethnicity shaped ideas of national belonging and citizenship rights? How have racial/ethnic appeals been used for political purposes? Focusing on the modern period, we will interrogate, on one hand, racial ideologies that have created social hierarchies as well as, on the other hand, strategies that people from marginalized groups have used to resist subordination. We take as our starting point the assumptions that 1) race is socially constructed and is therefore historically contingent and 2) how groups of people become racialized reflects structures of societal power.

Topics: Empire of Sport
HIST200B - Bob Dewey
Tuesday/Thursday

Organized sports are frequently described as one of Victorian Britain’s most enduring global legacies. This course will consider the historic development of organized sport in Great Britain and the British Empire through case studies analyzing rugby and cricket along with added discussion of the values of Olympism. Central themes will include the codification of games in the 19^th century, the emergent Victorian sporting ethos, amateurism/professionalism, women's sport and debates over gender roles and social class in a sporting context. Of particular interest are the cultural and sporting ties that spread to the Dominions and Crown Colonies of the British Empire and beyond through formal and informal means. The course will highlight the ways in which sport illuminated broader imperial developments including those that secured ties to Britain but simultaneously fostered emerging national and post-colonial identities and resistance. The geographic range of the class will include: cricket in the West Indies, Australia and South Asia; Rugby in New Zealand, South Africa and the Pacific Islands.

SPRING 2015 / TOPICS COURSES

Topics: Globalization and Resistance
HIST290B - Glen Kuecker
Tuesday/Thursday

Starting with the overthrow of Chile’s democratically elected socialist government on September 11^th, 1973, and following more substantially with the Mexican default in 1983, Latin American’s experienced a radical transformation of their statist economic system, a change that ushered in the era of neoliberalism that lasted until the financial crises of 2008. The neoliberal transformation provides the base line of inquiry for this course, through consideration of William Robinson’s Latin America and Global Capitalism. From this political and economic base, the course focuses in on consideration of the amazingly rich and diverse social movements that emerged throughout the region in response to the neoliberal project. While we will engage in multiple case studies, the course also provides theoretical insights form the social sciences about the meanings and experiences of resistance.

FALL 2014/ TOPICS COURSES

Topics: British Empire
HIST290A - Bob Dewey
Tuesday/Thursday, 12:40-2:10

At its apogee, the British Empire incorporated nearly one-quarter of the world’s landmass and population. Dominance of that scale, infused by economic influence and naval power, was both unparalleled and unprecedented. HIST 290 will survey the British Empire, from the granting of the East India company charter through imperial liquidation, with a particular emphasis on events during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The course’s geographic range includes considerations of British imperialism in South Asia, Asia, the Pacific, Africa and the Americas. The class will analyze important historiographical debates, the differences between formal and informal imperialism, competing visions of Empire, indigenous responses, and the cultures of imperialism.

Topics: Mexico City: An Urban History
HIST290B - Glen Kuecker
Tuesday/Thursday - 2:20-3:50

This course examines the history of Mexico City, one of the great cities of the world. We will cover the sweep of the city’s history from its earliest inhabitants thousands of years ago to the present. The course will consider the major social, political, economic, and cultural contours of the history, while also engaging the city’s environmental history. The narrative does double duty, as knowing the city’s history is also an excellent way to know the major issues, questions, and themes in Mexican history. Students, additionally, will be introduced to theoretical insights from urban studies, and gain experience in how to think about the city, an important intellectual challenge as the global community moves to a population of 9 billion by 2050, of which two-thirds will be urban. An amazing city has an amazing history, one that merits our attention.

spring 2014 / TOPICS COURSES

Topics: Latin American Environmental History
HIST290A - Glen Kuecker
Tuesday/Thursday - 2:20-3:50

The diversity of people, geography, and ecology in Latin America combine to make it one of the most diverse environments on the planet. Complementing the diversity is a rich history of human interactions with the environment. Knowing this history informs us about indigenous economic and cultural practices that offer alternative ways of thinking about how people relate to their environment. The history of conquest and colonization illustrate the dramatic, if not catastrophic, impact of European environmental practices, which helps us to further understand how modernity attempted to control nature, as well as the consequences of this effort. Learning the history also shows the troubled relationship between capitalism and the planet’s resources, and how the troubles were important in shaping Latin America’s social, political, economic, and cultural landscapes. The history is important for our thinking about the contemporary and future challenges we face, especially in the areas of climate change, resource extraction, food sovereignty, and disease, and energy.

FALL 2013 / TOPICS COURSES

Topics: Ecocities
HIST290A - Glen Kuecker
Wednesday - 12:30-3:30

With global population trends showing that humanity will be two-thirds urban by 2030, a startling growth in the size and number of cities is taking place. Existing cities will increase in size, and we will be building hundreds of entirely new cities, especially in Asia. These demographic trends have raised concern about sustainability. When we look at the current ecological footprint of cities, that concern appears very real. Some argue that cities constitute humankind’s greatest invention, and as such our urban world will be a problem-solving machine, a dynamic social system driven by innovation and creativity that will take on the great challenges of the 21^st Century. A new trend within architecture, design, planning, and finance is already in play in places like Dongtan (China), Masdar City (United Arab Emirates), and New Songdo City (South Korea). These are ecocities, built entirely from scratch with the goal of becoming the solution to our global problems. It is an audacious undertaking, full of experimentation, creativity, and innovation. This course deploys a workshop method for thinking about the ecocity. We will work together as research teams to learn as much as we can about the social, political, economic, and cultural forces at play in the ecocity phenomena. As the ecocity is a remarkably fertile topic for social science theory, the workshop will also use the case studies to learn about a range of topics within urban studies. As a workshop, the course design is very much an open-ended, exploratory, and dynamic learning community. It requires dedicated students who are looking for a merging of independent and collaborative work, as well as a chance to pursue an interdisciplinary course of study into one of the 21^st centuries most pressing topics.

Topics: Paradise Revisited
HIST300A - Bob Dewey
Tuesday/Thursday - 2:20-3:50

The notion of the Pacific Islands as "paradise" is a historic and pervasive fixture of stage, screen and tourist brochures. But when and how did the European construction of "paradise" and the representations that followed from it come about? More importantly, how have indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands represented or “re-presented” Oceania in light of that legacy? HIST 300A incorporates the history of the Pacific Islands including Aotearoa (New Zealand), with a thematic emphasis on representation from the late 18^th century to the present. During the semester you will engage and evaluate historiographic and epistemological debates which have shaped the study of Oceania as well as primary and secondary sources drawn from history, literature, anthropology, art and film.

Topics: American Suburbia
HIST300C - Aaron Cavin
Tuesday/Thursday - 12:40-2:10

Why do most Americans live in the suburbs? How does suburbia shape American politics, economics, and culture? Is suburbia the epitome of the American dream or has it become an American nightmare? In this course, we will examine the history of American suburbia, from its origins in the 19th century to the recent mortgage crisis. We will consider a wide variety of suburban issues, including housing and architecture, highways and sprawl, racial segregation and desegregation, the feminine mystique and American families, and the relationship between popular culture and public policy.

Spring 2013 / TOPICS COURSES

Topics: Latin American Resistance Movements
HIST290A - Glen Kuecker
Tuesday/Thursday - 7:00-8:30 pm

Topics: Revolutionary Russia
HIST290B - James Ward
Tuesday/Thursday - 12:40-2:10

In the first half of the twentieth century, revolution washed over Russia in three waves: the Revolution of 1905, the February and October Revolutions of 1917, and Joseph Stalin’s ‘Revolution from Above’ of the 1930s, which included the Great Terror. What sparked these explosions? How did they transform lives and worlds? What legacies did they bequeath not just to Russia but the world? We will investigate these questions within competing historiographical schools as well as from a variety of social viewpoints. Readings will include primary sources.

Topics: History of Islamic Philosophy
HIST290C - Nahyan Fancy
Tuesday/Thursday - 2:20-3:50

Topics: Dancing on the Wall: The Fall of European Communism
HIST300A - James Ward
Tuesday/Thursday - 8:20-9:50

In 1989, Communist regimes through Eastern Europe collapsed, followed within months by the shattering of the Soviet Union. What caused this remarkable, unprecedented, and entirely unexpected failure? Why did these revolutions produce both democratic renewal and ethnic war? How did this turn fit within a global context? We will examine each revolution in depth, starting in Poland and ending in the USSR. Coursework will include a research paper drawing on substantial primary sources and a presentation of findings to the class.

Topics: Environmental History of North America
HIST300B - Sara Fingal
Tuesday/Thursday - 2:20-3:50

Fall 2012 / TOPICS COURSES

Topics: Latin American Environmental History
HIST290A - Glen Kuecker
Tuesday/Thursday - 2:20-3:50

Topics: History of the 21st Century
HIST290B - Glen Kuecker
Tuesday/Thursday - 7:00-8:30 pm

Social scientists are increasingly becoming aware that the 21st century will be defined by one of the greatest transformations in human history. Early outlines of the great transformation are already apparent as large-scale, global, interconnected, and concomitant crises are causing deep structural change to the meanings and practices of the modern world. The perfect storm of crises (climate change, end of oil, food insecurity, rapid urbanization, population growth and aging, pandemics, economic instability, and ecological distress) are defining a new historical period, one that is distinct from the recent period of globalization, and one potentially marking a departure form the modern era. This transformation is happening in your lifetime. It will define the opportunities, limitations, risks, and challenges of your generation. Indeed, your generation will most likely engage in the building of a new civilization, an undertaking that is both daunting and exciting. This course approaches the perfect storm by introducing students to complexity thinking, which is one of the most important critical reasoning skills for the 21st century. In addition to learning the particulars of the crises we face, the course invites us to explore the new ways of being, thinking, and acting that are coming into formation. The course is offered for “W” credit.

Topics: Science and Medicine in Islamic Society
Hist 300A - Nahyan Fancy
Tuesday - 7:00-9:50 pm

This course examines the history of the study of nature within Islamic societies, beginning with the rise of Islam in the seventh century up until the early modern period. Through a combination of primary and secondary source readings, the class explores some of the major trends and debates within science and medicine of that period, including (but not restricted to): the make-up of the cosmos, the role of theory in medicine, the nature of body and soul, the epistemological status of mathematical models, and the relationship between reason and revelation. A special emphasis is also placed on situating these developments within the larger political, social and institutional structure of Islamic societies. Finally, the course engages with historiographical debates surrounding the position of Islamic science vis-à-vis ancient and modern science.

Spring 2012 / TOPICS COURSES

The American Experience: Abolishing Slavery (W)
HIST105A - David Gellman
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - 10:30-11:30

The struggle to abolish slavery was one of the longest and most important chapters in U.S. history. This course emphasizes efforts to end slavery from the Revolutionary era through the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Major topics include: the origins of antislavery ideology; the gradual demise of slavery in the North; the rise of the nineteenth-century movement for immediate abolition; the underground railroad; changing conceptions of race; and the final demise of slavery during the Civil War. The course will place particular emphasis on the biographies of the complicated and courageous women and men who helped to redefine the meaning of freedom in a nation deeply invested in African-American bondage.

Topics: Partition and Memory
Hist 300A - Nahyan Fancy
Wednesday - 8:30-11:20 am; Tuesday - 7:00-9:50 pm (Film study lab)
This course tries to understand the history of partition, its representations, memories and legacy in Israel-Palestine and Pakistan-India in a broadly comparative manner. It covers not only the events leading up to partition, but also how partition and partition memories and narratives continue to inform the construction of national identities in these regions, and the conflicts therein. The course uses a very interdisciplinary approach in order to grapple with the various collective memories of key events, and in order to flesh out their ethical and political implications. The class has a lab component, during which we will watch and critically engage with films on and about partition and memory in light of the assigned readings. We will assess the limits and capabilities of this genre as a means of refining cultural memories, coping with memories of violence, as well as challenging the status quo of collective memories.

Fall 2011 / TOPICS COURSES

Topics: Brazil
HIST290A - Benjamin Johnson
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - 1:40-2:40

“In the favelas, in the Senate, filth everywhere. Nobody respects the Constitution, but everyone believes in the future of the nation. What kind of a country is this? Que país é esse?” This question, set in the words of a famous Brazilian rock band but reverberating across public and private discourse, provides an entry into the history of a sub-continent (only recently, and secondarily, a nation) that continually surprises both natives and novices. This introduction to Brazilian history will begin at the beginning but will focus primarily on the modern history of Brazil, addressing such topics as Society and Nation, Slavery and Abolition, Gender and the Family, Economics and the Environment, and those other things that “só brasileiro faz,” that only Brazilians do.

Spring 2011 / TOPICS COURSES

The American Experience: Unsolved Colonial Mysteries (W)
HIST105A - David Gellman
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - 12:30-1:30

What really caused the infamous Salem witchcraft trials? Did Pocahontas really save John Smith, and if so, why? Were pirates freedom-loving egalitarians or ruthless vagabonds? How did African slavery become permanent and pervasive in Virginia? What were the Pilgrims really like? Could Indians ever have regained the upper hand in New England? Focusing primarily on England’s seventeenth-century North American colonies, the course will probe some of early American history’s most enduring and intriguing questions. Underlying all these questions will be an even more basic one: What was it like to be alive—as a man, woman, or child, Indian, African, or European—in a new world of conquest, community-building, and dramatic social upheaval.

Topics: Shattered Empire: The Habsburgs and Their Heirs, 1526-2002
HIST290A - James Ward
Tuesday/Thursday - 12:40 - 2:10

This course follows the history of the Central European Habsburg lands from the Ottoman Conquest of Hungary to the introduction of a common EU currency in the region. The core of this story is the shattering of an empire: the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918 in favor of the successor states of Austria, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia. How is life different under empires as opposed to nation-states? What impact, for better or worse, did the collapse of the empire have on polities, societies, cultures, and individuals?

Topics: Imperial Spain
HIST 290B - Berenberg
Monday/Wednesday - 12:40 - 2:10

An exploration of the history of Spain from the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1469 to the invasion of Napoleon in 1808. Traditionally, the history of Spain is told in terms of the story of its decline, but is this the best way to understand it? The course will look at the interactions of political, cultural, social and economic history, examining such issues as the changing nature of royal power, Spain's interactions with its religious minorities and the Inqusition, its acquisition of a large empire and the way the empire affected the state, Spain's participation in the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and the social structure and life of its people.

Topics: Latin American Environmental History
HIST 300A - Glen Kuecker
Tuesday/Thursday - 2:20 - 3:50

This course combines the perspective of environmental history with approaches from anthropology, sociology, and economics to gain understanding of the complex interaction between humans and the environment in Latin American history. It covers the range of the history, from the pre-Columbian period to present, as well as the scope of the region, from Brazil to Mexico. Anticipated topics include: pre-conquest peoples in the Amazon rainforest, the Columbian exchange, the post-conquest demographic collapse, mining, export agriculture, the Green Revolution, and urbanization. The course is discussion centered. Students should anticipate a rigorous reading load with multiple analytical essays constituting the core of evaluated assignments.

Topics: Collaboration, Resistance, and Retribution in Europe, 1938-1948
HIST300C - James Ward
Tuesday/Thursday - 8:20-9:50

This seminar focuses on the experiences of European populations under occupation or foreign domination during the Second World War. How did populations respond to an invader or hegemonic power such as Nazi Germany? Should one fight? Or was cooperation the more sensible and even more moral route? The course also explores how postwar Europe judged the choices made in the face of this dilemma. Our topics span high politics to individual lives. Our methods include a critical dialogue with select texts and themes as well as significant student research on primary sources.

Topics: Christians, Muslims and Jews in the Middle Ages
HIST 300D - Berenberg
Tuesday/Thursday - 2:20 - 3:50

An in-depth exploration of the relationships between three major faith communities from Late Antiquity through the fifteenth century. We will explore how the Christian West and the Muslim Middle East and North Africa dealt with their religious minority populations. We will also look at how the two communities related to each other, both in conflict and cultural and economic exchange. Topics will include issues like the Crusades, the apparent rise of anti-Judaic laws and violence in the Christian West, and how Christians and Muslims understood each other.

Fall 2010 / TOPICS COURSES

American Experience: Popular Music (W)
HIST105A - John Schlotterbeck
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - 9:20-10:20

This course follows Walt Whitman’s plea to “hear America singing” by listening to the “varied carols” of people “singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.” Popular music provides windows for understanding ordinary peoples’ everyday lives, cultural traditions, struggles, and hopes. We will sample popular musical traditions from the mid-18th to the mid-20th centuries examining their British, African, and European origins; their manifold expressions in ballads, hymns, spirituals, blues, work, and protest songs, and in regional music traditions; and how vernacular music and new technologies created popular music including minstrels, gospel, urban blues, country, and Rock ‘n Roll. Our focus will be on the South, the source and seedbed for most American popular music. No background in music theory or American history is required.

Topics: Global Migration (W)
HIST290A - Glen Kuecker
Tuesday/Thursday - 10:00-11:30

This course examines the process of globalization in Latin America as means for understanding the process of hemispheric migration. The course frames migration as a social movement, a form of resistance to neoliberal economic policies implemented throughout Latin America starting in the early 1980s. The course will provide historical context for understanding contemporary debates about migration, one of the central issues facing our nation. It also provides students with interdisciplinary approaches to thinking about historical processes. Our primary focus will be upon Mexico, but we will also include substantial analysis of Central America and South American countries.

Topics: The Rise and Fall (?) of the Nation in Europe
HIST290B - James Ward
Tuesday/Thursday - 8:20-9:50

Between 1600 and 1945, Europeans increasingly ordered their political, economic, and cultural space according to the idea of the nation. Projects such as the European Union, in contrast, have striven to transcend it. This course follows the rise of the category and the attempts to supplant it with other forms of identity. What is the nation, and how is it built? What are its consequences as a central perspective on the world? Are we entering a post-national age, or is the nation with us for the foreseeable future? Our readings include both scholarship and primary sources.

Topics: The Witchcraze in Early Modern Europe
HIST336 - Berenberg
Tuesday/Thursday - 2:20-3:50
Why did Europe suddenly erupt in a fury of witch trials in the sixteenth century? Why did these trials just as suddenly die out in the eighteenth? What was the role of religion in the pursuit of witches? Was misogyny at the heart of the witchcraze? These questions and more will be addressed in this course as we try to understand the nature of the European witchcraze. Through a close and careful analysis of primary documents, we will try to develop our own conclusions on this troubling episode of European history.