In seeking a short route to the Indies, Europeans unwittingly transformed the Atlantic from barrier to basin. To understand why and how these voyages of discovery and conquest occurred, we will examine plague, dissent, technology, and commerce in Europe. To grasp the consequences, we will read Crosby on biological imperialism, Thornton on Africans in the making of the Atlantic Basin, and Williams on slavery and capitalism.

"The Mediterranean is not even a single sea, it is a complex of seas; and these seas are broken up by islands, interrupted by peninsulas, ringed by intricate coastlines. Its life is linked to the land, its poetry more than half-rural, its sailors may turn peasant with the seasons; it is the sea of vineyards and olive trees just as much as the sea of long-oared galleys and the roundships of merchants. . . ." This course is a historical journey to the Mediterranean world of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries using as our vehicle the great scholarship of Fernand Braudel, quoted above. We will consider geography, demography, climate, and economies in the first part of the course, the formation of social structures in the second, and politics, religion, and culture in the final third. Any student seeking an introduction to this period or these places --Spain, Italy, and North Africa-- are invited to explore this exquisite basin of physical and human diversity. Some evening labs to be arranged.

This course examines the development of Irish society and culture and the political struggle against British rule since the 17th century. A variety of topics is emphasized, including religious conflict, the Famine, immigration, the Celtic Revival, and the ongoing problems in northern Ireland. Readings will focus on documents and sources from the time period.

This course offers a historical survey of sub-Saharan Africa from 1800 to the present. A primary aim of the course is to provide a foundation of knowledge upon which to build. The course has been designed to introduce the outlines of African history and to help cultivate an appreciation of Africa, its peoples, cultures, expressions, and experiences. Major themes include slavery in Africa: the decline of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, trade, African state formation, the Islamic revolutions of the 19^th century; Mfecane; colonial rule; nationalism and contemporary issues in Africa. Within the context of each of these themes, we will consider the importance of factoring gender into historical analysis.

Throughout much of its relatively brief history, the intellectual and artistic discourse in the United States has been divided between those who believe that intellectual and artistic works should serve a social or political purpose and those who believe in "art for art's sake." This survey will consider the origins of this debate and will examine specific texts that have reflected the conflict. Some of the problems we will consider are: 1) Is there an inherent conflict between social protest and aesthetic integrity in American intellectual history? 2) Which segments of the American population have tended to choose one side of this dichotomy or the other, and why? 3) What are the historical roots of this debate and what role does it play in contemporary American culture?

This course assumes that the history of labor in America is tied to the narrative of cultural diversity and the formation of individual and group identity in this country. It therefore explores the historical construction of race, gender, class, and ethnicity by American workers as they move in and out of multiple social spaces over time.

Why is the past so often a subject for contentious debate in the present? When and how does popular culture engage and represent the past without engendering controversy or debate? What is the relationship between popular presentations of the past and scholarly writings about history? The course introduces African novels as valid source material to understanding Africa's past. The novel in Africa is a pertinent source of information that can be used to both substantiate other historical records and to uncover themes that might have previously been underrepresented in African historiography. In order to answer the questions, this course begins with an examination of sources and methods used by historians of Africa and writings that suggest possible linkages between the novel and history and the novelist and the historian. Oral tradition and the role of the griot, or oral historian, will transition the class into the African novel and the role of the African author. Once we have formulated a theoretical outline of the relationship between history and the literary canon in Africa, we will examine selected novels from different historical periods in West Africa.

This course will be an interdisciplinary examination of medieval Jewish civilization, with emphasis placed on introducing students to: 1) the different methods of studying the Jewish people (through history, religion, literature and philosophy); 2) the concept of "traditional Jewish society"; and 3) the features of Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jewries. After an overview of the development of Judaism through the rabbinic period, our focus will turn to the Jewish experience from the rise of Islam through the Spanish expulsion. We will address both the internal life of medieval Jews, (self-government, religious culture, philosophical movements, gender roles) as well as political, economic, and cultural interactions between Jew and non-Jew in Muslim and Christian lands. Class sessions will explore the ways in which medieval Jews worshipped, studied, organized communities, developed professions, related to governing powers, responded to crises, and alternatively resisted, drew from, and contributed to surrounding cultures. By exploring the medieval Jewish experience in communities throughout the Diaspora, this course will also illuminate the origins, development, and particularities of Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jewry. Finally, close readings of primary source materials in class, from rabbinic commentaries and women's prayers to poetry and philosophic tracts, will introduce students to the variety of sources with which to explore the Jewish experience, as well as to critical skills of scholarly analysis.

This course will investigate images and realities of women from archaic Greece (c. 800 BCE) to the Roman Empire in the third century CE using literary, historical, legal, and archaeological sources. In the process it will also provide an introduction to the methods and goals of social history: research into the institutional and ideological structures by which people live and interact. Topics will include: early Greek sources; women's lives in classical Athens; women in Greek drama, religion and mythology; women within the state and women as outsiders; imagined women; women in Roman myth, literature, and history; and women in their own voices. All texts will be read in English. Open to first year students.

Now confined to the Falkland Islands and Bermuda, at its height the British Empire covered a quarter of the globe. How did the rise and fall of this empire over the past three centuries affect the colonizer and the colonized, and what is the empire's legacy in the world today? The history of empire is analyzed through course readings reflecting the viewpoints of both Britons and colonial subjects. Emphasis is placed on the imperial experience in India and Africa and includes such topics as cultural exchange, racism and race relations, resistance and nationalism, and the propaganda of empire.

This course is an introduction to major issues in the historical and anthropological study of Spanish and Portuguese colonial domination in the Americas. The course begins with an overview of three major pre-conquest societies in the Americas-the Maya, the Aztec, and the Inca-and with an examination of the Christian "reconquista" in Iberia. The course will then explore the consolidation of Spanish and Portuguese political and economic domination in the 16th and 17th centuries, the never-ending "spiritual conquests", slavery in the New World, and the legal and social reconstitution of colonial indigenous communities. We will then examine the colonial social fabric through an analysis of the categories of class, ethnicity, and gender. Afterwards, we will turn to the dynamics of conflicts between native peoples and the colonial order. After an assessment of late 18th-century reforms, this course ends with a consideration of the Latin American independence movements in the early 19th century. Course requirements include a map quiz, midterm and final exams, and a short research paper.

The course is a study of urbanization in America, as a social process best understood by relevant case studies. Topics will include the establishment of the nation's urban network, the changing function of cities, the European roots of American city layout and governance, urban social structure, the emergence of urban culture, and American views of cities.

As king of France from 1643 to 1715, Louis XIV was the Sun-King. He built Versailles, extended French territory through war and diplomacy, encouraged the arts and sciences, and protected the Catholic faith. That was the carefully cultivated public image. Behind the scenes, famine, war, censorship, and religious repression made the populace restive and undermined the monarchy, domestically and internationally, for generations to come. In this course, we will investigate both image and reality, drawing on documents, literature, and iconographic sources.

The relationship between Imperial China and non-Chinese "barbarians" has played a fundamental role in Chinese history. This course focuses on the relationship between the last two Chinese dynasties, the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911), and their respective policies towards and relationship with "barbarians" up to the nineteenth century. The course seeks to present the non-Chinese "barbarians," including Tibetans, Mongols, and Turkic peoples of Inner Asia, as a dynamic force that deserves equal consideration in defining the Sino-"barbarian" relationship. In the course, we will trace the shifting identity of the "barbarians," from northern nomadic tribes during the Ming, to the "foreign" Manchu Qing dynasty and the Western "barbarians." In addition, the social and cultural repercussions of the rise of the non-Chinese Qing dynasty and its resulting "barbarian" policy will be highlighted.

This course will use the tools of different disciplines to examine the tragic events of the Holocaust. We will explore central and difficult questions arising out of the Nazi era, such as: how could the destruction of European Jewry be perpetrated by one of the most advanced and sophisticated European cultures? What was the relationship between Christian anti-Judaism and the rise of the genocidal racial anti-Semitism in Germany? How did German political traditions lay the foundation for a Nazi dictatorship? Why did German citizens accede to the Nazi extermination program? How did European Jews respond to the unfolding crisis? What role did gender play in Nazi ideology and the experience of the victims? Could more have been done by the Western powers, American Jews, and the Catholic and Protestant Churches to aid European Jewry? Was the mass murder of the Jews "unique" or can it be compared to other twentieth-century genocides? We will also consider debates in Holocaust historiography, such as between the functionalist and intentionalist schools and over Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners.

8 credits This team-taught interdisciplinary course will consider in depth Soviet Russian culture from the late 1920s to the early 1950s. This historical period witnessed Stalin's ascent to power, the implementation of collectivization and industrialization, political purges, the evolution of the forced-labor-camp system (Gulag) and World War II. In contrast to conventional approaches that treat Stalinism as a political phenomenon and focus on political, social and economic developments of the period, this course will examine Stalinism as a cultural phenomenon. Believing with Max Weber that "man is an animal suspended in the web of meanings that he himself has spun," we will discuss Stalinism as a cultural system that represented a peculiar fusion of tradition and modernity. In addition to social, political and economic aspects, we will explore the ways in which reality was constructed and represented artistically through fiction, painting, photography, film, music and architecture. Particular attention will be paid to the ideology and aesthetics of public ritual and the significance of popular culture. Our topics will include the relationship between art and propaganda from the early Soviet avant-garde to Socialist Realism, the utopian novel, the theater of the absurd, memoirs and literature of the Gulag, and artistic portrayals of Stalin. We will devote special attention to the purges of the 1930s, both as a political policy and a symbolic eschatological experience which marked the apocalyptic end of the old and the beginning of the new, socialist world, as well as the phenomenon of the cult of personality. A film series will be part of the course.

This course offers the history of Central Europe from the Thirty Years' War to the eve of the First World War. Our main theme is the rivalry between the Houses of Hohenzollern and Habsburg for control of Germany and the strategic role played in this struggle by Bohemia. To portray the great difference in the culture and the intellectual disposition of Prussians, Austrians, and Czechs we will use excerpts from the history of Berlin, Vienna, and Prague. Student obligations: regular class attendance, five short papers, and one final examination.

The course will cover the history of East Central Europe from 1945 to the present. After a brief summary of the history of the region before and during World War II, the course will concentrate on the region's evolution since the war. In addition to surveying the period and examining the turning points in its evolution (for example, the Berlin uprising of 1953, the Hungarian revolution and reforms in Poland in 1956, the "Prague spring" of 1968, the Solidarity movement in Poland, and the revolutions at the end of the 1980s), we will explore a variety of specific topics, including political systems, economic organization, ethnic conflicts, and gender relations. Readings will include a textbook, specialized studies, original sources, and works of fiction.

This course is an interdisciplinary examination of expressions of existentialism that manifested in American culture following World War II. The course will be structured around areas that provide a framework for the texts and questions under consideration. After an introduction to the problem of defining existentialism and the emergence of an American existential attitude between the World Wars, we will examine the relationship between existentialism and literature and art in the United States after World War II. Next we will assess existentialism's role as a reaction to the Cold War culture of the 1950s. The class will then consider the existential movement in psychology, as well as its role in religion. Finally, the course will explore the relationship between American existentialism and race and the 1960s. The texts will include novels, films and works of non-fiction.

China is conventionally portrayed as a single, centralized state. This course exposes the underlying fissures within this monolithic representation and explores the tension between nation and region in China from the mid-19th century to the present day. Beginning with the Taiping Rebellion, Muslim Revolt and Xinjiang Rebellion, the Qing Dynasty struggled to maintain centralized control over these separatist movements. In the course, we will consider the impact of these revolts, efforts to restore centralized national authority in the face of increasing regional autonomy, the late Qing state's resurgence, warlordism, and the rise and varying conceptions of nationalism during the twentieth century. Other topics that will be explored include the current challenges of Tibet and Taiwan to the PRC's "one nation" policy.

See description in Sociology section.

The rise of urban industrial society during the 18th and 29th centuries created a host of new criminal problems and would-be solutions that are with us still. This course explores 200 years of criminal history and criminological debates, with special emphasis on capital punishment, the rise and development of the penitentiary, criminological debates on "nature vs. nurture," and race and gender bias within the criminal justice system. Extensive readings are the basis for weekly discussions, and include works by Cesare Beccaria, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Michel Foucault.

From Ferdinand and Isabella to Diana and Charles, the royal marriage has been one of the central institutions of monarchy in the modern West. We will study it within the context of changing conceptions of dynasty, foreign alliance, and succession even as we consider the production and reception of its ceremonial as political spectacle. Religion, marital fidelity, sexuality, and the female body are only a few of the subjects that give shape to this neglected aspect of political discourse. We will work intensively with a wide range of primary sources including legal codes, letters and diaries, pamphlets, newspapers, paintings, and images through various media.

Prerequisite: any course on European history; a second European language would be helpful but not necessary.

In recent years, the documentary has gained ascendence as a medium for communicating diverse aspects of history, culture, and the individual. In this course, we will examine varying approaches to documentary research in film, printed texts, photography, and aural media. With a special emphasis on oral history, the class will analyze the techniques used by such interviewers and documentarians as Studs Terkel, Les Blank, and the photographer Walker Evans. The course will require students to complete an oral history documentary project by the end of the semester.

Targeting mainly the decade from 1954 (Brown v. Board of Education) to 1964 (Civil Rights Act), this course will survey the struggle for African-American civil rights in the years following World War II and culminating in 1968 with the death of Martin Luther King, the ascendancy of black nationalism, and the institutionalization of civil rights gains in the second Johnson administration. The course will explore the following themes: precedents for the Movement in earlier labor, peace, and socialist lobbies; the early Movement focus on legal and constitutional redress; the infrastructure for the Movement in pre-existing black community institution; the radicalization of the Movement; and the role the Movement played in instigating later, separate protest movements. While this course is open to all students, a strong preference will be given to moderated students and/or students with prior course work in this period.