HISTORY

CRN

92021

Distribution

C/D

Course No.

HIST / LAIS 101

Title

Latin American History to 1910: Empires, Colonies, Nations

Professor

David Tavarez

Schedule

Tu Th 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 201

Note: This is the foundation course in Latin American studies, and is the prerequisite for all other LAIS courses.

Cross-listed: LAIS

See LAIS section for description.

CRN

92078

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST 131

Title

The Politics of Culture

Professor

Mark Lytle

Schedule

Tu Th 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm OLIN 204

Cross-listed: American Studies

This course develops the assumptions that Americans define their differences more through their culture than their politics. Those differences are sometimes muted and at others inflamed by the role of culture in the market place. The Scopes Trial over the teaching of evolution is a telling example. Over the semester we will focus on the development of modern media, popular cutlure, advertising, architecture, gender roles, and official efforts to suppress cultural differences. The readings will include novelists like Twain, Fitzgerald, Salinger, and Mary Gordon who have had a keen sense of the sources of cultural conflicts.

CRN

92023

Distribution

C/D

Course No.

HIST 135

Title

"In the Realm of the Son of Heaven": Imperial Chinese History

Professor

Robert Culp

Schedule

Tu Th 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 303

Cross-listed: Asian Studies

China's imperial state, sustained in one form or another for over two millennia, was arguably history's longest continuous social and political order. This course will provide an introduction to the origins and transformations of the Chinese imperial order from the Neolithic period to the final decades of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912). Particular points of focus will be the founding and transformations of the imperial state, the emergence of the literati class and their refinement of elite culture, China's explosive premodern urbanization, and late imperial period rural peasant society. We will also discuss the fluid and complex relations between Chinese states and their Central Asian neighbors (the Xiongnu, Uighurs, Tibetans, Mongols, Turks, and Manchus), and assess the impact of Buddhism on China's Confucian and Daoist philosophical traditions. A sweeping overview of premodern Chinese history, this course will provide a foundation for further study of East Asian history and culture. First-year students are encouraged.

CRN

92054

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST 138

Title

The Mediterranean World

Professor

Tabetha Ewing

Schedule

Tu Th 4:30 pm - 5:50 pm OLIN 201

Cross-listed: Italian Studies, LAIS

Related interest: AADS

"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.

CRN

92262

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST 141

Title

A Haunted Union: Twentieth-Century Germany and the Unification of Europe

Professor

Gregory Moynahan

Schedule

Mon Wed 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm OLIN 101

Cross-listed: German Studies

The development of modern Germany has been at the center of nearly every dystopian reality and utopian aspiration produced by twentieth-century continental Europe. This course will examine the history of Germany from its 1871 unification to the 2002 constitutional convention of the European Union, paying particular attention to Germany's troubled relation with broader European society and identity. Using an array of primary documents, including bi- weekly films, we will examine Germany's pivotal place in the ideological divisions (traditionalism / modernism, fascism / liberal democracy, capitalism / communism), political catastrophes, and -- more optimistically -- theoretical, social, and scientific innovations of modern Europe. As a guiding theme, we will use the paradox that even as Germany is perhaps the most 'modern' of European states, its definition - and with it the identity of its citizens - has been haunted since inception by its past. Topics of particular importance will include: the multiple 'unifications' of Germany (as a state, as a racist 'greater' Germany, as a reunified power within the European Union), the impact of World War One, the political experiment of Weimar democracy, the role of 'German' and 'European' identity in Nazi propaganda and expansion, the Holocaust, daily life in capitalist west and communist east Germanies, the consolidation of the European Union since 1951, the student protests of 1968 and the critique of the U.S., and the creation of a new German and European identity after 1989. No previous courses in history are required, but if space is limited preference will be given to history majors or potential majors.

CRN

92281

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST / JS 150

Title

From Brighton Beach to Broadway: American Jewish Culture in the Twentieth Century

Professor

Rona Sheramy

Schedule

Tu Th 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm OLIN 205

Cross-listed: American Studies, Jewish Studies, MES

2 credits, This course will end in late October.

See Jewish Studies section for description.

CRN

92035

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST 151

Title

Historical Studies: The City

Professor

Tabetha Ewing / Myra Armstead

Schedule

Tu Th 8:30 am - 9:50 am OLIN 203

Cross-listed: American Studies

In the core historical studies courses, we focus on trans-national and inter-regional processes and, in doing so, are enabled to rethink both national and/or regional historical narratives as well as the relationships among nations and regions. As a truly comparative inter-regional perspective, this will provide opportunities for de-centering privileged locales in our historical perspective. "The City" is a team-taught course on the making of the urban form, from strategies of urban planners to the contingencies of immigrant settlement. We locate this process concretely within social and political contexts so that gender, class, ethnicity, race, and citizenship are always as important as the values assigned geographic and sociocultural space. To this end, we will use city descriptions and travelers' accounts along with a number of visual sources, e.g., plans, maps, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings, as much for what they exclude as include. But images of the city are only part of the story. Infrastructure sectors--water, lighting, energy, waste disposal, transportation and communications more generally--will also be considered. These may define how a city comes to see itself and is understood as central or secondary, attractive or repugnant, a consumer or producer, in the context of the state, the empire, or the world.

CRN

92319

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST 154

Title

Greek Civilization

Professor

James Romm

Schedule

Mon Wed 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm OLIN 205

Cross-listed: Classics, Literature

An introductory survey of the history, literature and material culture of the ancient Greeks, beginning with their arrival in the Agean around 2000 BC and ending with their defeat by Alexander the Great in 338; we will take excursions also into the Near Eastern lands with which the Greeks had important contacts, including Egypt, Babylon and Persia. Focus will be on the development of the polis or city-state with its distinctive political organization, which, in the case of Athens, made possible the first working democracy in the western world; the flowering of the polis-based culture in the so-called Golden Age; and the decline of Athens and of the Greek polis generally, leading to the collapse of democracy and submission to foreign rule. Readings will be taken mostly from primary sources: the writings of Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle and Demosthenes. We will make extensive use of slides and of web-based materials to examine the surviving monuments of this era.

CRN

92761

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST 173

Title

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Professor

Myra Armstead

Schedule

Mon Wed 8:30 am - 9:50 am OLIN 308

Cross-listed: AADS, MES

The trans-Atlantic slave trade spanned roughly 400 years after 1450 and was a distinct episode in human history. It was a departure from all previous years when the majority of people held as slaves were not African. The New World plantations supplied by the trade supplanted earlier plantations located in the Mediterranean. The volume of the Atlantic commerce in African captives exceeded the number of European immigrants to the Americans until 1820 by nearly four times. This phase of history prompts many questions: Who were the key actors in the trade? Why did Africans participate in the trade? Were there earlier African experiences of international trade in human beings? Was there indigenous slavery in Africa, and how did it compare and/or connect to the Atlantic trade? What were the crucial dynamics of the sea voyage to the Americas as free whites and captive blacks encountered each other, often for the first time? What impact did the trade have on the economies of Europe, Africa, and the Americas? What cultural disruptions and survivals occurred as a result of the trade? What intellectual constructions permitted the trade? Why did the trade end? These and other related questions will be addressed as we examine a variety of sources: slave ship interiors, slave ship logs, traders' journals, captives' narratives, and various secondary materials. The course is open to first-year and unmoderated students for whom it will be taught as an introductory survey. For moderated students, it may be taken as a major conference for which a long research paper must be prepared. Although the primary focus will be on British North America and its role in the trade, students with interests in the Caribbean, the West Indies, Canada, and European ties to the trade are welcome.

CRN

92022

Distribution

C/D

Course No.

HIST / LAIS 206

Title

Latin American Revolutions

Professor

David Tavarez

Schedule

Tu Th 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm OLIN 202

Cross-listed: LAIS

See LAIS section for description.

CRN

92344

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST 209

Title

History from the Inside II: African History in the Novel

Professor

Wilmetta Toliver

Schedule

Mon Wed 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 306

Cross-listed: AADS

CRN

92282

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST / JS 210

Title

History of the Holocaust

Professor

Rona Sheramy

Schedule

Mon Wed 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm LC 115

Cross-listed: Jewish Studies, MES

2 credits, This course will end in late October.

See Jewish Studies section for description.

CRN

92019

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST 2110

Title

Early Middle Ages

Professor

Alice Stroup

Schedule

Tu Th 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 304

Cross-listed: Classical Studies, Medieval Studies

Related interest: French Studies

The European "middle ages" -originally so called as a term of derision-are more complex and heterogeneous than is commonly thought. This course surveys seven centuries, from the Germanic invasions and dissolution of the Roman Empire to the Viking invasions and dissolution of the Carolingian Empire. Topics include early Christianity, "barbarians," Byzantine Empire, Islam, monasticism, the myth and reality of Charlemagne. Readings include documents, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, Einhard's Life of Charlemagne, and selections from Ammianus Marcellinus's The Later Roman Empire and Gregory of Tours's History of the Franks. Open to first year students.

CRN

92343

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST 2301

Title

China in the Eyes of the West

Professor

Robert Culp

Schedule

Tu Thurs 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 205

Cross-listed: Asian Studies

European Enlightenment thinkers viewed the Qing dynasty as the world's most enlightened despotism, but by the turn of the twentieth century most Western thinkers considered China to be the "sick man of Asia." This course will reconstruct the visions of China formulated by Europeans and Americans during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and explore how and why those visions changed over time. We will approach these issues with the goal of understanding how those constructions facilitated Western imperialism toward China, even as imperialism generated the social, cultural, and political contexts in which those constructions were produced. Shared readings in theoretical literature discussing Orientalism, cross-cultural observation, and the politics of modernization theory will provide a common framework for our work. For most of the semester, our reading and discussion will focus on common readings of literary texts, popular histories, news reports, travel writing, and academic works. The course will culminate in individual research projects on a particular text, film, or depiction analyzed in light of the conceptual frameworks we have used throughout the semester. Open to first year students.

CRN

92383

Distribution

C

Course No.

SOC 251 / HIST

Title

Sex, Love, Race & Beyond: Multi-ethnicity, Multi-raciality and the Mingling of American Peoples

Professor

Joel Perlmann

Schedule

Tu Th 4:30 pm - 5:50 pm OLIN 205


See Sociology section for description.

CRN

92079

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST 265

Title

Vietnam:America's Longest War

Professor

Mark Lytle

Schedule

Mon 7:30 pm - 10:00 pm OLIN 102

Wed 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 203

Cross-listed: American Studies

The end of the Cold War invites us to reconsider its causes and its consequences. For the United States, Vietnam stands as its most tragic effort to defeat world communism. For students to understand Vietnam we must explore through two lenses: the lens of history and the lens of politics. Thus this course will invite students to learn the history of a war that lasted some thirty years, and to consider the political issues that have informed our attempts to explain it. Because Vietnam has stirred so much controversy for so long (consider the Clinton campaign), we will not confine our analysis to the scholarly realm. Journalists and filmmakers have added much to our understandings and misunderstandings about Vietnam. Each Monday evening we will view either documentary or commercial films that interpret some central aspect of the war. Each Wednesday students will participate in a point-counterpoint dialogue exploring the many issues that Vietnam has raised then and now.

CRN

92020

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST 3121

Title

The Case for Liberties

Professor

Alice Stroup

Schedule

Mon 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN 306

Related interest: French Studies, History & Philosophy of Science, Political Studies

What is tyranny? When is rebellion justified? What defines a nation? Given human nature, what is the ideal government? Is there a human right to free trade? Is commerce compatible with art and philosophy? Such questions prompted Netherlanders in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to carve a Dutch Republic out of the Spanish Empire, and to create a "Golden Age" of capitalism, science, and art. We will supplement monographs on Dutch history with paintings, scientific treatises, and the literature of rebellion and republicanism (including Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise).

CRN

92384

Distribution

C

Course No.

SOC 322 / HIST

Title

A Sociological Classic: Middletown and America

Professor

Joel Perlmann

Schedule

Wed 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm OLIn 205


See Sociology section for description.

CRN

92260

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST 3530

Title

Women and Science

Professor

Elizabeth Hanson

Schedule

Wed 1:30 pm - 4:30 pm OLIN 309

Cross-listed: Gender Studies, History & Philosophy of Science

How have women participated in science? What is the historical role of gender in defining who can do science and what counts as scientific knowledge? How has science interpreted male-female differences? How have scientific careers for women developed in the twentieth century? We will read the work of historians such as Londa Schiebinger and Margaret Rossiter, primary texts including E. H. Clarke's Sex in Education, biographies of Marie Curie and Barbara McClintock, and recent evaluations of the status of women in science by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and other groups. Our goal is to understand the profound impact of social place in the history of science as well as the social nature of scientific knowledge. Students will have the opportunity to do original research, both at the Rockefeller Archive Center and through oral history projects. This is an Upper College Seminar open to all moderated students.

CRN

92014

Distribution

C/D

Course No.

HIST 365

Title

Russian Intellectual History

Professor

Gennady Shkliarevsky

Schedule

Tu 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN 308

Cross-listed: Russian and Eurasian Studies

Russian nineteenth-century secular thought is the subject of this seminar. Following a brief introduction dealing with the modernization of Russia and the origin of Russian secular thought and of the intelligentsia, the class will focus on the major trends and personalities in nineteenth-century Russian thought. Topics include continuity and change in Russian culture, debates between Westernizers and Slavophiles, revolutionary populism, and socialism. Extensive readings are the basis of weekly discussions and include works by Chaadaev, Gogol, Herzen, Tolstoy, Chernyshevsky, Dostoevsky, and Lenin and contemporary studies of the Russian intellectual tradition.

CRN

92345

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST 366

Title

Women in Africa

Professor

Wilmetta Toliver

Schedule

Tu 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN 307

Th 10:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 301

Cross-listed: AADS, Gender Studies

See AADS section for description.

CRN

92034

Distribution

C

Course No.

HIST 373

Title

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Professor

Myra Armstead

Schedule

Wed 8:30 am - 10:50 am OLIN 308

Cross-listed: AADS, MES

The trans-Atlantic slave trade spanned roughly 400 years after 1450 and was a distinct episode in human history. It was a departure from all previous years when the majority of people held as slaves were not African. The New World plantations supplied by the trade supplanted earlier plantations located in the Mediterranean. The volume of the Atlantic commerce in African captives exceeded the number of European immigrants to the Americans until 1820 by nearly four times. This phase of history prompts many questions: Who were the key actors in the trade? Why did Africans participate in the trade? Were there earlier African experiences of international trade in human beings? Was there indigenous slavery in Africa, and how did it compare and/or connect to the Atlantic trade? What were the crucial dynamics of the sea voyage to the Americas as free whites and captive blacks encountered each other, often for the first time? What impact did the trade have on the economies of Europe, Africa, and the Americas? What cultural disruptions and survivals occurred as a result of the trade? What intellectual constructions permitted the trade? Why did the trade end? These and other related questions will be addressed as we examine a variety of sources: slave ship interiors, slave ship logs, traders' journals, captives' narratives, and various secondary materials. The course is open to first-year and unmoderated students for whom it will be taught as an introductory survey. For moderated students, it may be taken as a major conference for which a long research paper must be prepared. Although the primary focus will be on British North America and its role in the trade, students with interests in the Caribbean, the West Indies, Canada, and European ties to the trade are welcome.