Course |
HIST 101 Europe to 1800 |
|
Professor |
Alice Stroup |
|
CRN |
95310 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 9:00 -10:20 am OLIN 308 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY
|
The millennium opened a new era of European
ascendancy. For three hundred years,
Europe basked in warmer weather.
Northern Europeans improved agriculture and lived longer, and a new
middle class revived cities as centers of commerce and culture, on both sides
of the Alps. Inventions like mechanical
clocks, cannons, and mills inaugurated a first industrial revolution (complete
with water- and air-pollution). Then
came the apocalypse: a little ice age
and the Black Death shaped the material conditions of life for the next five
centuries. After fifty percent of
Europeans died (1340-1350), famine and epidemic kept the population in check
until the 1700s. Yet we associate these
five hundred years with the invention of the printing press and the rise of
literacy; with socio-intellectual ferments associated with Renaissance,
Reformations and Counter-Reformations, Enlightenment, and Scientific
Revolution; with socio-political revolutions that modernized the Netherlands,
England, and France; and with the creation of a global empire. How can we explain the continued ascendancy
of Europe in such hard times? To
understand the paradoxical making of Europe, we will read primary sources and
modern historical analyses.
Course |
HIST / CLAS 103 Rise & Fall of Ancient Rome |
|
Professor |
Benjamin Stevens |
|
CRN |
95006 |
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 1:30 -2:50 pm OLIN 201 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: A/C |
NEW: HISTORY
|
A survey of ancient
Rome, from its eighth-century BC “rise” out of prehistoric Italic precursors to
its “fall” in the fifth century AD at the hands of barbarians, bureaucrats, and
others. Our goals are: (1) to become familiar with the traditional narrative of
Roman history including political and military events; (2) to consider social,
cultural, and intellectual aspects of life in ancient Rome (e.g. gender and
sexuality, food and drink, and literature); and thus (3) to explore what it
means to “do Roman history”. We read a modern narrative of Roman history,
several ancient narratives and monographs, and modern scholarly works.
Participation in this class qualifies students for consideration for Professor
Minsky’s Roma In Situ. (January and Spring 2006).
Course |
JS / HIST 120 Jewishness Beyond Religion: Defining Secular Jewish Culture |
|
Professor |
Cecile Kuznitz |
|
CRN |
95303 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 10:30 -11:50 am HEG 300 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: A |
NEW: HUMANITIES
/ RETHINKING DIFFERENCE
|
In the pre-modern world Jewish identity was
centered on religion but expressed as well in how one made a living, what
clothes one wore, and what language one spoke. In modern times, Jewish culture
became more voluntary and more fractured. While some focused on Judaism as
(only) a religion, both the most radical and the most typical way in which
Jewishness was redefined was in secular terms. In this course we will explore
the intellectual, social, and political movements that led to new secular
definitions of Jewish culture and identity in the modern period. We will focus
on examples drawn from Western and Eastern Europe but will also look at
American and Israeli societies. Topics will include the Haskalah (Jewish
enlightenment), acculturation and assimilation, modern Jewish politics
including Zionism, and Jewish literature in Hebrew, Yiddish, and European
languages.
Course |
HIST 135 “In the Realm of the Son of Heaven”: Imperial Chinese History |
|
Professor |
Robert Culp |
|
CRN |
95301 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 10:30 -11:50 am OLIN 306 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY /
RETHINKING DIFFERENCE
|
Cross-list: Asian StudiesChina’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 explores the transformations of imperial China’s state, society,
and culture from their initial emergence during the Zhou period (1027-221 BC)
through the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911, when a combination of imperialism
and internal stresses destroyed the imperial system. Through readings in
philosophy, poetry, fiction, and memoir, and use of a rich array of visual
sources, the course follows several major thematic threads. These include the
ever-shifting definitions of and interactions between "China" and
Central Asian "barbarians"; the interdependent relationship between
the imperial bureaucracy and social elites; literati, consumer, and popular
culture; state ritual, religious practice, and folk traditions; gender
constructions and the relative social power of men and women; as well as
changes in family organization and rural life. A sweeping overview of premodern
Chinese history, the course provides a foundation for further study of East
Asian history.
Course |
HIST 139 City Cultures |
|
Professor |
Myra Armstead / Cecile Kuznitz |
|
CRN |
95295 |
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 10:30 -11:50 am OLIN 203 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY
|
(Global Core Course)Examining
the built environment of cities is a powerful method for uncovering the social
and cultural dynamics that shaped the past of urban populations. In this course we will look comparatively at
five cities in the U.S. and Western and Eastern Europe, considering a variety
of physical structures and spaces from the preindustrial, industrial, and
postindustrial eras. We will examine features of the urban landscape including
parks, tenements, cafes, skyscrapers, streetcorners, world’s fairs, freeways,
museums, courtyards, and even sewers. We will “read” these sites for what they
reveal about urban life across time, including such issues as economic changes,
technological innovation, new forms of leisure, changing relationships to the
environment, the development of working class culture, and the imposition of
political hegemony. Cities to be studied include New York, Los Angeles,
Chicago, Paris, and Vilna.
Course |
HIST 146 Bread and Wine |
|
Professor |
Tabetha Ewing |
|
CRN |
95398 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 4:00 -5:20 pm OLIN 307 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: E |
NEW: HISTORY
|
Cross-listed: French Studies, Theology
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.
Course |
HIST / CLAS 157 The Athenian Century |
|
Professor |
Carolyn Dewald |
|
CRN |
95465 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 2:30 – 3:50 pm OLIN
205 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: A/C |
NEW: HISTORY
|
In the fifth century
BCE, Athens dramatically developed from a small, relatively unimportant
city-state into a dominant power in the Aegean basin. Athenian political, artistic, literary, and intellectual
traditions continue to reverberate through the world today: democracy, tragedy
and comedy, rhetoric, philosophy, and history itself, as well as the classical
style of sculpture and architecture stem from this remarkable culture. The course will confront some of the
ambiguities and tensions (slavery, exclusion of women and non-citizens from
political power), as well as the glories, of Athenian art, literature, and
history during this period.
Course |
REL / HIST 160 Narrating the Modern Middle East |
|
Professor |
Nerina Rustomji |
|
CRN |
95290 |
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 10:30 -11:50 am OLIN 301 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HUMANITIES
|
Cross-listed: Global & Int’l Studies, Human Rights
In 1979, Iran underwent
a revolution that overthrew Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi and replaced his rule
with an Islamic theocracy. In an attempt to understand the revolution’s
significance within Middle Eastern history, two narratives have emerged: The
first argues that the presence of an Islamic state is a divergence from the
process of modernization; the second interprets the revolution as a culmination
of political and religious resistance against imperialism and colonialism. We
examine historical monographs, imperial communiqués, political tracts,
ethnographies, novels, and film in order to assess these opposing narratives.
The course brings into focus the interrelations between imperialism, Islamic
reform and revival, nationalism, and colonialism from the sixteenth to the
twentieth century. It analyzes social and political movements of the British,
French, Iranian and Ottoman governments, as well as how events influenced and
were influenced by the peoples of the various regions of the Middle East.
Course |
HIST / STS 161 Introduction to the History of Technology and Socio-Technical Systems |
|
Professor |
Gregory Moynahan |
|
CRN |
95304 |
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 12:00 -1:20 pm OLIN 202 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY
|
Cross-Listed: Global & Int’l Studies; Science, Technology & Society
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.
Course |
HIST 163 Inventing the Self in Early America |
|
Professor |
Andrew Needham |
|
CRN |
95298 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th
4:30 – 5:50 pm OLIN
205 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY /
RETHINKING DIFFERENCE
|
Cross-listed:
American Studies
This course will examine how a disparate cast of
people – from famous Americans such as Ben Franklin, Mary Rowlandson, and
Frederick Douglass to long-forgotten figures such as Andrew Montour, Stephen
Arnold and Hannah Bernard – constructed personal identities in the messy world
of early American history. We will examine the processes of personal identity
formation, question the degree of flexibility people had in making their
selves, and work to connect these individual actors to larger changes in understandings
of racial, gendered, and national identities. Coursework will include
autobiographical writings, visual images, and some secondary historical essays.
Written work will consist of three essays and reaction papers.
Course |
HIST 167 The History of Sexuality |
|
Professor |
George Robb |
|
CRN |
95449 |
|
Schedule |
Wed 1:30 – 4:20 pm ALBEE 106 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY / RETHINKING DIFFERENCE |
Cross-listed: Gender & Sexuality Studies, Human Rights, Science, Technology & Society
The purpose of this
course is to enable you to develop a crucial understanding of how definitions
of human sexuality have evolved in particular social and national contexts, how
social concerns about sexuality have been played out in personal and political
realms, and how a wide range of sexual identities have been constructed in
different historical contexts. We will
explore various issues in the history of sexuality covering a broad range of
theoretical and thematic questions, and we will focus primarily on Western
Europe and North America in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Course |
HIST 168 Czarist Russia |
|
Professor |
Gennady Shkliarevsky |
|
CRN |
95816 |
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 1:30 -2:50 pm OLIN 307 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY
|
Cross listed: Russian and Eurasian Studies
A semester-long survey will explore Russian history
from Peter the Great to the 1917 revolution in a broad context of modernization
and its impact on the country. Among
the topics of special interest are:
reforms of Peter the Great and their effects; the growth of Russian
absolutism; the position of peasants and workers; the rift between the monarchy
and educated society; the Russian revolutionary movement and Russian Marxism;
the overthrow of the Russian autocracy.
The readings will include contemporary studies on Russian history and
works by nineteenth-century Russian writers.
Course |
HIST / PSY 172 The History of Medicine and Psychiatry |
|
Professor |
Noga Arikha |
|
CRN |
95463 |
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 12:00 – 1:20 pm OLIN 204 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: A/C |
NEW: SOCIAL
SCIENCE
|
Cross-listed: Psychology; Science, Technology &
Society
This course offers a survey of the history of
Western medicine through its changes and continuities, from its beginnings in
ancient Greece to the 19th century. The history of psychiatry is considered an
integral aspect of the history of medicine: the class charts the development of
psychiatry through the key concepts that have shaped assumptions about the
nature of emotion, about mental illness, and about the relation of the brain
with the mind. The course focuses on how the body and the embodied mind have been
mapped and cared for over the centuries, and on the fraught and often
inconsistent relation between medical theory and medical practice. It tells the
history of reason’s role in identifying correlations between symptoms and
causes and in understanding those in whom health or reason has failed. Sessions
will be mainly conducted on the basis of the study of assigned primary texts,
from antiquity to the 19th century, and informed by relevant secondary
literature. They will be structured chronologically but will focus on such key
concepts as psyche, pneuma, humour, craniocentrism, spirit, vital force, nerves
- all presented as markers to identify the continuities and ruptures in the
beliefs that have informed the theory and practice of medicine and psychiatry.
Course |
HIST 192 The Age of Extremes: Topics in European History 1789-2000 |
|
Professor |
Gregory Moynahan |
|
CRN |
95467 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 10:30 -11:50 am ASP 302 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY
|
Cross-listed: Global & Int’l Studies
This course will present a thematic survey of the
modern period. Each week we will use methodologies and historiographies ranging
from gender and demographic history to diplomatic and military history. It will
thus offer both an in-depth presentation of key aspects of modernity and a
survey of contemporary historiography. Key issues discussed will include: the
relation of the industrial revolution to the creation of new institutions of
invention and patent, the role of colonialism in shaping domestic social
relations and definitions of race, the role of gender in relation to the
demographic explosion of European population and to new attempts at state
control of human activity, the development of the ‘military-indistrial-academic
complex,’ the role of institutional structure in diplomacy, and the affect of
new mass media on citizenship. This course is intended as a complement to HIST
102, the department’s narrative history
of the modern period, but this course is not required if students have a basic
grasp of modern European history. Supplemental reading will provide a broad
narrative base for students who need a refresher.
Course |
HIST 2032 Indochine |
|
Professor |
Tabetha Ewing |
|
CRN |
95399 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 2:30 -3:50 pm OLIN 203 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY
|
Cross-listed:
Asian Studies, Global
& Int’l Studies, Human RightsFrench
Indochina was composed geographically of Vietnam (divided into Cochinchine,
Annam, and Tonkin), Cambodia, and Laos.
This course is ordered around the theme of social order, from
pre-colonial state structures in the early modern period to the French colonial
re-structuring and administration of the built environment, commercial
relations, law and punishment in these places.
We end with the famous rout at Dien Bien Phu (1954) that brought a
violent end to French rule in Indochina.
Throughout the course, we focus on local cultural exchanges, criticism,
and resistance to French ideas (put in practice) of History, progress, and the
modern.
Course |
HIST 2124 Vietnam and Iraq: Wars of Mass Deception |
|
Professor |
Mark Lytle |
|
CRN |
95296 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 10:30 -11:50 am OLIN 205 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY
|
Cross-listed:
Human Rights
Since World War II, the United States has fought
two controversial and widely unpopular wars--Vietnam and the 2003 War in
Iraq. Both wars began with presidential
deception--Gulf of Tonkin and WMDs--to justify a crusade against a global
enemy--Communism and terrorism. In
both, US forces became bogged down in battles against an elusive enemy and serious casualties on the civilians
whose hearts and minds would ultimately determine the outcome. My Lai and Abu
Graib brought into doubt the legitimacy of each war. And in both domestic public opinion split between the desire to
"protect our boys (and women)" and a sense that the war was both ill
advised and unwinnable. The primary
focus of the course will be on Vietnam, with a secondary concern to determine
if that war offers "lessons” that help us understand the War in Iraq.
Course |
HIST 237 The Sixties |
|
Professor |
Mark Lytle |
|
CRN |
95297 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 1:00 -2:20 pm OLIN 203 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY
|
Cross-listed:
American Studies, Human Rights
This course will examine the irony of increasing
political dissent and violence in an era of relative peace and prosperity. It
will touch on such topics as civil rights, media and politics, narcissism, the
Cuban missile crisis, youth alienation, popular culture, the feminist movement,
and Watergate. It will take an in-depth look at the three presidents who left
their mark on the era--John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon--as well
as the most disruptive crisis of the post-war years, the Vietnam War.
Course |
HIST 2500 From Sun-Tzu to Suicide Bombing: The Evolution and Practice of Military Strategy, Tactics, and Ethics from Ancient Times to the Present |
|
Professor |
Caleb Carr |
|
CRN |
95484 |
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed
7:00 – 8:20 pm OLIN 202 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY
|
Cross-listed: Human Rights, Science, Technology & Society
Related
interest: Global
& Int’l Studies
From Sun-Tzu's China and Caesar's Rome to
Cromwell's England and Frederick the Great's Prussia, through the rise of
"popular" or "total" war that began with the French
Revolution, and on into the unprecedented destruction of global war in the
twentieth century, these and related questions have persisted: What constitutes
a professional army, as opposed to a band of well-armed criminals? When
if ever should civilians be considered legitimate targets and players in
war? What military means can the international community, or even a
single nation seeking the status of legitimate power, reasonably and ethically
employ in the face of vital threats? Have professional soldiers advanced or
retarded the cause of reforming global conflict? Should their views be given
special priority and influence? Can certain tactics in war be labeled
"aberrant"? Should their authors be punished by non-participatory
organizations and nations? Is the proliferation of advanced weapons to
cultures that have not yet developed them ever a permissible or ethical
practice? Indeed, the roots of the fundamental military debate of the
modern era - how to confront the problem and the underlying ethics of
international terrorism - can be traced back to the ancient era in every part
of the world. Certain times have produced leaders who have met the problem of
reforming and controlling war with greater success than others: why? And why
has our own ostensibly advanced modern age experienced so little success in
this area?
Course |
HIST / SOC 258 Jews in American Society, 1880 to the present |
|
Professor |
Joel Perlmann |
|
CRN |
95307 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 4:30 -5:50 pm OLIN 204 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY /
RETHINKING DIFFERENCE
|
Cross list: American
Studies, Jewish Studies, SRE
The great waves of east-European Jewish migration
west after 1880 constitute a major event in the modern history of the Jews and
of the United States, creating a large and important American social
group. This course examines Jewish social and cultural
transformations during the succeeding century. We will keep in
mind throughout two (overlapping) questions. First,
what major developments are shared with other immigrant and ethnic groups and
what is distinctive to the Jews (as a people, civilization or
religion)? And second, what meanings does ‘Jewishness’ have for
American Jews as their social conditions, and the wider culture, change across
generations? Substantively, the course will consider such major
themes as 1) the pattern of migration and cultural amalgam of the ‘Yiddish’
immigrant generation 2) the rapid upward mobility of American Jews as well as
their concentration on the political left and explanations for both patterns 3)
concern with antisemitism and American Jewish behavior during the European
Holocaust, 4) the meaning of intermarriage to couples, their children and the
culture of the group and 5) evolving attitudes towards Israel over the past
half century, and their impact on American foreign policy. A term
paper will be the major writing assignment in a seminar-discussion context.
Course |
HIST 280A American Environmental History I |
|
Professor |
Andrew Needham |
|
CRN |
95299 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 2:30 -3:50 pm OLIN 202 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY
|
Cross-listed: American Studies, Human Rights, Science, Technology & Society
The first part of a two-part survey, this course
will examine the interactions and interconnections between human and non-human
societies in the era between colonial contact and the construction of the
transcontinental railroads. The course will focus on the following issues: the
environmental consequences of contact between European and Native societies;
the biological exchange between Europe and the New World; differences between
European and Native land use patterns; changing ideas of wilderness, the urban,
and the pastoral; the environmental effects of early American urbanization,
agriculture, and hunting practices; the Market Revolution and its environmental
effects; and the effects of the railroad on the co- modification of nature.
Course |
HIST 3103 Political Ritual in the Modern World |
|
Professor |
Robert Culp |
|
CRN |
95302 |
|
Schedule |
Wed 1:30 -3:50 pm OLIN 301 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY
|
Cross-list: Asian studies;
Anthropology; Global & Int’l Studies Human RightsBastille Day,
the US presidential inaugural, Japan’s celebration of victory in the
Russo-Japanese War, pageants reenacting the Bolshevik Revolution, and rallies
at Nuremberg and at Tian’anmen Square. In all these forms and many others,
political ritual has been central to nation-building, colonialism, and
political movements over the last three centuries. This course uses a global,
comparative perspective to analyze the modern history of political ritual. We
will explore the emergence of new forms of political ritual with the rise of
the nation-state in the nineteenth century and track global transformations in
the performance of politics as colonialism spread the symbols and pageantry of
the nation-state. Central topics will include state ritual and the performance
of power, the relationship between ritual and citizenship in the modern
nation-state, the ritualization of politics in social and political movements,
and the role of mass spectacle in the construction of both fascism and state
socialism. Seminar meetings will focus on discussion of secondary and primary
materials that allow us to analyze the intersection of ritual and politics in a
variety of contexts. These will range from early-modern Europe, pre-colonial
Bali, and late imperial China to revolutionary France, 19th century America,
colonial India, semi-colonial China, nationalist Japan, fascist Italy, Nazi
Germany, the USSR, Europe in 1968, and contemporary Syria. In addition to
common readings and seminar participation, students will write a final seminar
paper exploring one aspect or instance of political ritual. Moderated history
students can use this course for a major conference. This course may be taken
in conjunction with Anthropology 327.
Course |
HIST 3117 The High Middle Ages |
|
Professor |
Alice Stroup |
|
CRN |
95397 |
|
Schedule |
Mon 1:30 -3:50 pm OLIN 308 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY
|
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.
Course |
HIST 3122 The Making of the Sunbelt |
|
Professor |
Andrew Needham |
|
CRN |
95300 |
|
Schedule |
Wed 4:00 -6:20 pm OLIN 308 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: HISTORY
|
Cross-listed: American Studies, Science, Technology & Society
This course will investigate the causes and
consequences of one of the fundamental changes in American society and politics
over the past fifty years: the rise in national power of the region stretching
from North Carolina’s Research Triangle to Orange County, California. This area
of the nation saw dramatic population increases, contained many of the major
federal projects of the post World War II era (NASA’s Kennedy and Johnson Space
Centers, the majority of the federally funded aerospace industry), became the
location of new cultures for both young and old (from the surfing and
skateboarding culture of Southern California to the culture of retirement in
Phoenix’s Sun City), served as the location of much of the post-1965 new
immigration, and has been the political birthplace of the last eleven men
elected President. The region has fundamentally shaped the nation’s ideas about
race, labor, upward mobility, and America itself. The rise of the Sunbelt has also fundamentally reshaped the
environment, as new energy and water intensive cities and suburbs have grown
from small cities to sprawling metropoli over the course of a few decades. This
is a research seminar so that students will have the opportunity to investigate
these concerns not only through group readings and discussions but by producing
a substantial paper based on original research.
Course |
SOC / HIST 322 Sociological Classics: Middletown and Ethnic Communities in America |
|
Professor |
Joel Perlmann |
|
CRN |
95308 |
|
Schedule |
Wed 4:00 -6:20 pm OLIN 310 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C |
NEW: SOCIAL
SCIENCE / RETHINKING DIFFERENCE
|
Course |
HIST / CLAS 333 Tacitus and Gibbon: History as Literature |
|
Professor |
William Mullen |
|
CRN |
95029 |
|
Schedule |
Wed 1:30 -3:50 pm OLIN 308 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: D |
NEW: FLLC
|
On hearing that his granddaughter was reading
Tacitus, Thomas Jefferson wrote to her: “Tacitus I consider as the first writer
in the world without a single exception.
His book is a compound of history and morality of which we have no other
example.” The translation of Tacitus
into English by Trenchard and Gordon, with prefatory essays enlisting him for
the Whig cause, contributed significantly to the ideology of the American
Revolution. And the same year Jefferson
penned the Declaration of Independence Gibbon published the first volume of his
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, often praised both for being the greatest
historical work of modern times and for containing the finest English prose of
the 18th century. We will read extensive selections from both authors (in the
case of Tacitus comparing translations on some key passages), and we will
consider what we read at all times from both a historical and a stylistic point
of view. Both men found somber irony in their contemplation of the great preponderance
of human vices and follies over virtues, and both men are as renowned for the
prose styles they evolved as for the passion they brought to their great theme
of the loss of liberty to tyranny. Our
task will be to gain a comprehensive view of their subjects and
to take the measure of the greatness of the literary art with which they
set them forth.
As an Upper College Seminar this course requires
moderated status in Classics, History or Literature, or else permission of the
instructor. Participation in this
class qualifies students for consideration for Professor Minsky’s Roma In
Situ. (January and Spring 2006).
Course |
REL / HIST 339 Muhammad and his Wives |
|
Professor |
Nerina Rustomji |
|
CRN |
95294 |
|
Schedule |
Tu 4:00 -6:20 pm OLIN 203 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: A |
NEW: HUMANITIES / RETHINKING DIFFERENCE
|
Crosslisted: Gender and Sexuality Studies, Theology
Depending on which
biography you read, the prophet Muhammad can be either the perfect model of a
righteously guided Muslim or the vilest example of tyranny, manipulation, and
sexual depravity. In between these two polarities is a vast range of attitudes
about Muslim prophecy and Islamic faith. This class studies the politics
inherent in biographies of Muhammad and his wives. Its aim is to analyze
religious biography as a historical and polemical form of writing and to trace
the developing traditions of Muslim and non‑Muslim accounts of Muhammad
and his female companions. Muslim will include the first historical accounts of
the early Islamic community in the /Sira/ of Ibn Ishaq, traditions found within
sayings of the prophet Muhammad, universal histories, devotional literature,
and contemporary popular manuals and children’s comic books. Non‑Muslim
sources will include medieval European tracts about Muhammad, the first printed
biographies in early modern and Victorian England, and early and contemporary
books about Muhammad in America.
Course |
HIST 350 20th-Century Russia: A Society in Turmoil |
|
Professor |
Gennady Shkliarevsky |
|
CRN |
95392 |
|
Schedule |
Tu 4:00 – 6:20 pm OLIN 304 |
|
Distribution |
OLD: C/D |
NEW: HISTORY
|
Cross-listed:
Global & Int’l Studies, Russian & Eurasian Studies
The most important force that shaped the
contemporary world was the process of modernization initiated by the eighteenth‑century
revolution in France and the English industrial revolution. As a result of
modernization, many societies underwent a profound transformation that changed
them beyond recognition. The seminar will discuss the modernization of Russia
and its diverse effects on Russian society. It will cover the period from the
reforms of 1861 under Tsar Alexander II to the 1930s. Among the topics to be
considered will be political changes in Russia, including the 1917 revolution
and the establishment of Stalin’s regime; economic developments in pre‑
and postrevolutionary Russia; and social transformation (the rise of the
working class and the bourgeoisie, changes in the position of the peasantry and
women). Students will be required to write a substantial paper on a historical
problem related to the period. Some prior exposure to Russian or Soviet history
will be helpful.