CRN	93465	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST 146
Title	Bread and Wine: A Cultural History of France from the Middle Ages to the 18th Century
Professor	Tabetha Ewing
Schedule	Tu Th 4:30 pm – 5:50 pm OLIN 201

Cross-listed: French Studies

Related interest: Religious Studies

Today the artisanal baguette represents the un-exportable French past; the rich, bottled bordeaux the easy export of the French territorial patrimony. This course is an exploration of early practices of making bread, breaking bread, and bread-winning, drinking wine, quaffing ale, sipping coffee, tea, and chocolate. Alimentation, in general, and bread and wine, in particular, is the central metaphor for consuming or understanding humanistic, religious, and political culture. We will read of medieval and early modern land cultivation (grape and grain); of eating and not eating in medieval women’s religious culture; of new seasonings brought to French culture by returning merchants and explorers; from Rabelais on the gargantuan devouring of liberal education; of massacre and spiritual renewal in the Protestant and Catholic reformations with Montaigne’s retort in his essay “On Cannibals”; of a transfigurative, divine-right kingship under Louis XIV that made into gods men of royal lineage. We will conclude in the 18th century, with the rise of the café as a space in which elites met and critiqued politics and culture, with taverns and bread riots as sites in which the poor met and critiqued elites. Tastings. No prior course in French Studies required.

CRN	93366	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST 148 / AADS
Title	African Encounters I: Culture, History, and Politics in Africa
Professor	Jesse Shipley
Schedule	Tu Th 11:30 am – 12:50 pm OLIN 201

See AADS section for description.

CRN	93020	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST / CLAS 157
Title	The Athenian Century
Professor	Carolyn Dewald
Schedule	Mon Wed 3:00 pm -4:20 pm OLIN 306

Cross-listed: Classical Studies

The Corinthians in Thucydides say of the Athenians: "In a word, they are by nature incapable of living a quiet life themselves or of allowing anyone else to do so either." Fifth-century Athens is our first western example of a culture that becomes non-traditional; one's role was no longer defined as doing precisely what one's father had done. Many of our most basic ideas about the role of the individual as citizen, the nature of politics and political culture, and the point of a humanistic civic identity come from formulations that took shape between 508 and 404 BCE on the Attic peninsula. The course is two-pronged: its outline is historical, the study of how Athens grew into the complex city it became in the fifth century. To this end, we'll study the sociological, historical, and political transitions that were crucial in shaping Athenian culture, from the rule of law instituted by Draco and Solon, through the tyranny of the Pisistratids, to the period of the Cleisthenic democratic revolution and its later radicalization by Pericles and the demagogues. On the other hand, much of the interpretive content of the course will concern the qualities of the culture. We’ll read some of the biographies of Plutarch, tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, comedies of Aristophanes, history as written by Herodotus and Thucydides, and some philosophical essays of Plato and Aristotle. I hope that the two prongs, historical and cultural, will come together in such a way that they enrich each other: one understands the history by understanding the cultural values of its citizens, and one understands the culture by looking at the historical forces that shaped it.

CRN	93168	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST 161
Title	Introduction to the History of Technology and Socio-Technical Systems
Professor	Gregory Moynahan
Schedule	Tu Th 11:30 am – 12:50 pm LC 208

Cross-Listed: History and Philosophy of Science

Related interest: HR

This course will survey the history and historiography of technology in the late modern period. The course will begin by studying how a separate domain of technology first came to be defined, in theory and practice, during the eighteenth century within such diverse activities as agriculture, time measurement, transport, architecture, and warfare. We will then address how institutional forces such as law, academia, business and government came to define and influence technological change and scientific research during the industrial revolution. Throughout the course, we will avoid casting the history of technology solely as a history of 'things' and instead focus on technology as a process embedded within research agendas, institutions, social expectations, economics, and specific use -- and thus as part of a broader 'socio-technical system.' Case studies ranging from the bicycle and nuclear missile targeting to public health statistics and the birth control pill will allow us to develop 'internal' accounts of the development of technology and science in conjunction with 'external' accounts of the historical context of technologies. The course will conclude with an assessment of recent approaches to the history of technology, such as the influence of systems theory or actor-network theory. Authors read will include Hacking, Heidegger, Hughes, Landes, Latour, Lenoir, Luhmann, Mokyr, Spengler, and Wise. If course space is limited, preference will be given to History and History of Science concentrators.

CRN	93665	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST 162
Title	China and the Silk Roads: Past and Present
Professor	Kristin Bayer
Schedule	Mon Wed 11:30 am – 12:50 pm OLIN 303

Since the first millennium CE, traders and religious believers traveled between China and points west along the ancient routes that became known as the “Silk Roads.” In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, European archaeologists and explorers competing to “discover” ancient sites found rich troves of textiles, paintings, sculptures, temple complexes, ruined cities, and documents in many different languages, some never before encountered. Over time, the region of the Silk Road, now known as Central Asia (including the western Chinese province of Xinjiang), changed considerably over issues of national boundaries, religion, trade, and government. It still remains a contested area drawing global attention of various powers vying for control. In this course we will learn about commerce, religion, society, and daily life on the Silk Roads, taking into consideration both ancient history and the current situation.

CRN	93019	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST 190
Title	The Cold War: Constructing the Enemy in the Age of Globalism
Professor	Gennady Shkliarevsky / Mark Lytle
Schedule	Tu Th 1:30 pm -2:50 pm OLIN 201

Cross-listed: Human Rights

Like two scorpions the Soviet Union and the United States warily circled each other in a deadly dance that lasted over half a century. In a nuclear age, any misstep threatened to be fatal not only to the antagonists but possibly also to the entire human community. What caused this hostile confrontation to emerge from the World War II alliance? How did Soviet-American rivalry affect the international community? And why after more than fifty years did the dance end in peace rather than war? Traditionally historians have approached those questions from a national point of view. Their answers had political as well as academic implications. To blame the Soviet Union was to condemn Communism; to charge the United States was to find capitalism as the root cause of international tensions. In this course we try to reconsider the Cold War by simultaneously weighing both the American and Soviet perspective on events as they unfolded. We will look at Stalinism, McCarthyism, the nuclear arms race, the space race, the extension of the Cold War into the third world, the rise of American hegemony, Vietnam and Afghanistan, Star Wars, and the effort to reach strategic arms limitation agreements. Finally, we will challenge the claims of American conservative ideologues that the Reagan arms buildup "won the cold war." Students will examine key documents of the Cold War era and prepare several papers on world areas or events that they chose to explore.

CRN	93002	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST 2111
Title	High Middle Ages
Professor	Alice Stroup
Schedule	Tu Th 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 308

Cross-listed: French Studies, Medieval Studies

The rise of towns is one of many changes that transformed Europe after 1000. The High Middle Ages is an era of cultural flowering, population growth, and political consolidation, occurring between the two cataclysms of Viking invasions and bubonic plague. Primary sources and monographs help us understand this intriguing and foreign world. We will read modern analyses of medieval inventions, heretics in Southern France, the plague, and women’s work. We will also examine medieval texts--including anticlerical stories, epic poetry, and political diatribes--to get a contemporary perspective on values and issues.

CRN	93029	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST 2122
Title	The Arab-Israel Conflict
Professor	Joel Perlmann
Schedule	Tu Th 4:30 pm -5:50 pm OLIN 204

Cross-listed: Human Rights, Jewish Studies

This course is meant to provide students with an understanding of this conflict from its inception to the present. Considerable attention will be given to the present; nevertheless, the conflict is simply incomprehensible without a solid understanding of its evolution – incomprehensible not merely in terms of details, but in terms of broader themes and aroused passions. Among the themes to be discussed are the following. A Jewish national movement arose in the late nineteenth century to oppose the conditions of Jewish life in Europe, and an Arab national movement (as well as a specifically Palestinian movement) arose to oppose Ottoman and European rule of Arab peoples. Out of the clash of these movements emerged the State of Israel and the Palestinian refugees in 1948. The political character of the conflict has changed over the decades: first it involved competing movements (before 1948), then chiefly a conflict of national states (Israel vs. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, etc), and now it is conceived as chiefly a conflict between Israeli military rule of territories (occupied since the 1967 war) and an insurgent Palestinian independence movement. Military realities also changed greatly, as did the accusations about the role of “terror” as a tactic (from the Jewish Irgun to Hamas). And not least, the conflict has been shaped by strategic and economic considerations of the great powers (Ottoman, British, American/Soviet, hegemonic American) as well as by considerations of domestic political culture in Israel and in the Arab world.

CRN	93367	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST / JS 215
Title	Beyond the Shtetl: The History of East European Jewry, 1772-1939
Professor	Cecile Kuznitz
Schedule	Mon Wed 3:00 pm – 4:20 pm OLIN 305

This course will survey the history of the Jews of Eastern Europe from the partitions of Poland until the Holocaust. It will go "beyond the shtetl (small town)," first by considering nostalgic stereotypes of East European Jewish life in American popular culture and comparing them to the realities of traditional Jewish society. It will then look at how that society underwent profound changes in the modern period, creating radically new forms of Jewish community, culture, and political organization that went far beyond the traditional values of the shtetl. Topics to be covered include the rise of Chasidism and Haskalah (Enlightenment); pogroms and Russian government policy towards the Jews; modern Jewish political movements such as Zionism and the socialist Jewish Labor Bund; literature in Hebrew and Yiddish; urbanization and emigration; and Polish and Soviet Jewries in the interwar period. The course materials will include both primary and secondary historical sources, as well as literature and film of the period under study.

CRN	93666	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST 2306
Title	Gender and Radicalism in Modern China
Professor	Kristin Bayer
Schedule	Tu Th 11:30 am – 12:50 pm HEG 300

Cross-listed: Gender Studies

This course explores the intertwined rise in 20th century China of radical political and social ideas and movements, on the one hand, and gender as a significant category of historical analysis, on the other hand. We will investigate how and why various radical ideas in modern China—including nationalism, anarchism, socialism, Marxism, Maoism, and labor movements—were inextricably linked to gender issues. We will pay particular attention to the problem of the historical constructions of new subjectivities—male and female, radical and not—throughout the 20th century.

CRN	93022	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST 261
Title	European Intellectual and Cultural History since 1870
Professor	Gregory Moynahan
Schedule	Mon Wed 1:30 pm -2:50 pm OLIN 203

Cross-listed: Human Rights

Of related interest: History & Philosophy of Science, French Studies, German Studies, Italian Studies

In this course, we will study transformations in the modern perception of society and nature within a political, cultural, and institutional framework. Beginning with discussions of key figures such as Freud, Nietzsche, Mach, and Weber, the course will outline the suppositions and fault lines on which twentieth-century thought developed. Central themes will include movements such as impressionism, positivism, and existentialism, as well as more specific problems such as the crisis of liberalism and the intellectual roots of fascism. The course will conclude with studies of post-structuralism, French feminism, and the role of intellectuals and artists in the fall of state communism in Eastern Europe. Please note that the first semester of the course, History 2136, is not a prerequisite for taking the second semester. Students who have not taken the first semester of the course should speak with the professor in advance and have some background in social theory, philosophy, or modern European history.

CRN	93027	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST 280A
Title	American Environmental History I
Professor	Mark Lytle
Schedule	Wed Fr 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 202

Cross listed: American Studies, Environmental Studies

Since the Old World first encountered the New, a struggle has taken place over what this new world might become. For some, it meant moral and spiritual rejuvenation. For most, it meant an opportunity to tap a natural warehouse of resources that could be turned into wealth. At no time have those two visions been compatible, despite the efforts of politicians, artists, and scientists to reconcile them. This course is about that struggle. It looks specifically at the United States from the colonial era until the early Twentieth Century–a period in which one of the world’s most abundant wildernesses was largely transformed into an urbanized, industrial landscape. We will study the costs and consequences of that transformation while listening to the voices of those who proposed alternative visions.

CRN	93030	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST / CLAS 300
Title	Major Conference: Creating History
Professor	Carolyn DeWald
Schedule	Th 10:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 307

Cross-listed: Classical Studies

The word “history” comes from the first sentence of Herodotus, the Greek historian of the fifth century BCE, commonly called the Father of History. In Herodotus' hands, however, “historie” meant not history, the intellectual discipline as we know it today, but rather “investigation,” or even “eye-witness examination.” In this course we will look closely at how history as a field of inquiry came about, and the way that the first two great Greek historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, shaped its identity. We will read Herodotus' History of the Persian Wars and Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, but we will read them not so much for their informational content about what happened in 481-479 and 431-404 BCE as for evidence about how the first two western historians thought about such things as data (when is it trustworthy?), narrative structure (does this inevitably distort the data?), depiction of character (what role does the individual have in shaping events?), and their own ideas about the usefulness of the discipline that they invented (does it tell a true story? does this matter?). We will use contemporary postmodern controversies about what history is, and the degree to which it can be trusted or is useful, as the frame through which to examine the accomplishments of Herodotus and Thucydides. In short -- is “'history” just another form of narrative fiction? Or does it have a data-driven integrity that separates it decisively from other kinds of creative narrative? This is an Upper College Seminar for moderated students, and it is particularly recommended as a major conference for concentrators in Historical Studies.

CRN	93031	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST 3112
Title	PLAGUE!
Professor	Alice Stroup
Schedule	Mon 1:30 pm -3:50 pm OLIN 308

Cross-listed: Human Rights, Medieval Studies, Hist & Phil Of Science

The cry “Plague!” has struck fear among people around the world, from antiquity to the present. What is plague? How has it changed history? Starting with Camus’ metaphorical evocation of plague in a modern North African city, we will examine the historical impact of plague on society. Our focus will be bubonic plague, which was epidemic throughout the Mediterranean and European worlds for four hundred years, and which remains a risk in many parts of the world (including the southwestern United States) to this day. Topics include: a natural history of plague; impact of plague on mortality and socio-economic structures; effects on art and literature; early epidemiology and public health; explanations and cures; the contemporary presence of bubonic plague and fears about “new plagues.” Readings include: literary works by Camus, Boccaccio, Manzoni, and Defoe; historical and philosophical analyses by ancients Thucydides and Lucretius; contemporary literature on history, biology, and public health. Upper College Seminar: open to fifteen moderated students.

CRN	93672	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST 3233
Title	Darwin and Evolutionary Thought
Professor	Elizabeth Hanson
Schedule	Fr 10:30 am – 12:50 pm OLIN 310

Cross-listed: History and Philosophy of Science

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution generated the most far-reaching, intellectual revolution in recent history. This course focuses on Darwin’s life and work in social and historical context, as well as the reception and popularization of On the Origin of Species (1859). We will begin by discussing scientific thought just before Darwin, through the texts of Malthus, Paley, Lyell, and Lamarck. The second part of the course turns to Darwin, his biography, the voyage of the Beagle, and the production of the Origin. Next we will discuss Darwin’s supporters and critics, social Darwinist notions of “survival of the fittest,” and the reception of Darwin’s writings in different national contexts, including the Scopes Trial debate in the United States. The course will conclude with readings on the relationship between genetics and evolution, and more recent understandings of evolution. Students will have the opportunity to present research and write short papers on subjects including the influence of Darwinian thought on science, social thought, philosophy, religion and literature. Open to students in the Upper College.

CRN	93032	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST 3311
Title	Women Write the Globe
Professor	Tabetha Ewing
Schedule	Fr 10:30 am -12:50 pm LC 206

Cross-listed: Gender Studies, Human Rights

European women had more to say --in novels, plays, correspondence, and essays-- about the American discoveries, colonialism, slavery, the Orient, and war-and-peace, than we are generally led to believe. They shaped how Europeans made common sense of these all-important global issues, through the intermingling of private and public spheres, elisions between the hierarchy of civilizations and gender hierarchies, and the complex (and often confounded) mechanics of female authorship and feminine desire. We will examine this process through the writings of Renaissance humanist Veronica Franco, best-selling English playwright Aphra Behn, French intellectual Germaine de Staël, anti-slavery pamphleteer and feminist Elizabeth Heyrick, and the dangerous stories of Louisianan Kate Chopin. The class will travel to the National Museum of Woman in the Arts in Washington, D.C. Junior seminar for Gender Studies concentrators. 200-level tutorial available to student concentrators in Gender Studies.

CRN	93028	Distribution	C
Course No.	HIST 347
Title	1917 Revolution in Russia
Professor	Gennady Shkliarevsky
Schedule	Mon 1:30 pm -3:50 pm OLIN 309

Cross-listed: Russian & Eurasian Studies

The subject of the seminar will be the 1917 revolution in Russia. The topics under consideration will include: the economic and social developments which preceded the revolution, intellectual and cultural background of the revolutionary movement, ideology and practice of major political parties which participated in the revolutionary events, the role of women in the revolutionary movement, the political dynamics of the revolution and the reasons for the Bolshevik victory, as well as the effects of the revolution on Russian society. Readings will include original works and scholarly studies.