Course
|
HIST
101
The Making of Europe to 1815
|
|
Professor |
Alice Stroup |
|
CRN |
97026 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 9:00 - 10:20 am OLIN 308 |
|
Distribution |
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 The Rise and Fall of Rome
|
|
Professor |
Benjamin Stevens |
|
CRN |
97025 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th
2:30 – 3:50 pm OLIN 201 |
|
Distribution |
History |
Cross-listed: Classical Studies
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” and “to do history” generally. 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 2008).
Course
|
HIST
1270
Victorian Crime & Punishment
|
|
Professor |
George Robb |
|
CRN |
97022 |
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 12 noon-1:20 pm OLIN 203 |
|
Distribution |
History |
Cross-listed: Victorian Studies
This class will provide a broad overview of the
major developments in the criminal justice system during the 19th century.
Our focus will be Britain and the United States. We will explore the rise of
crime in industrial society and the various attempts to understand and control
criminal activity, including the development of penitentiaries, police forces,
criminology, and forensics. We will also consider the image of the criminal in
popular culture by studying representations of crime as well as stories of
famous criminals.
Course
|
HIST
130
Origins of American Citizen
|
|
Professor |
Christian Crouch |
|
CRN |
97011 |
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 12 noon-1:20 pm OLIN 205 |
|
Distribution |
History |
Cross-listed:
American Studies; Human Rights;
SRE
The United States is often portrayed historically as
emerging triumphantly in 1776 to offer inclusive citizenship and a
transcendent, tolerant “American” identity to all its indigenous and immigrant
residents. Yet the reality of American
history belies this myth. The nation’s history is transnational and yet we
focus mostly on its Anglophone roots, ignoring that the “U.S.” was carved out
of the contests of many empires and grew on internationally based forced labor
regimes. It is a story of individuals,
alone and/or together, contesting, reacting towards, rejecting, influencing,
and embracing the changing notions of what “the United States” and “America”
were from the sixteenth century well into the nineteenth century. The course
focuses on six moments that definitively challenged and shaped conceptions of
“American identity”, “citizen”, and “the United States”: the early colonial
period, the Constitutional Convention, Cherokee Removal, the era of the
internal slave trade and the “Market Revolution”, the Mexican-American War, and
Reconstruction.
Course
|
HIST
138
The Mediterranean World
|
|
Professor |
Tabetha Ewing |
|
CRN |
97014 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 4:00 -5:20 pm OLIN 101 |
|
Distribution |
History |
"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 Jewish, Christian, and
Muslim religion and culture in the final third. Any student seeking an
introduction to this period or these places --Spain, Italy, Southern France,
and North Africa-- are invited to explore this exquisite basin of physical and
human diversity.
Course
|
HIST
161
History of Economics & Technology
|
|
Professor |
Gregory Moynahan |
|
CRN |
97372 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 10:30 - 11:50 am RKC 102 |
|
Distribution |
History |
Cross-Listed:
Global & Int’l Studies;
Science, Technology & Society (core course)
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
168
Czarist Russia
|
|
Professor |
Gennady Shkliarevsky |
|
CRN |
97024 |
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 1:30 -2:50 pm OLIN 204 |
|
Distribution |
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
2104 The Way We Work
|
|
Professor |
Myra Armstead |
|
CRN |
97880 |
|
Schedule |
Tu 2:30 – 4:50 pm OLIN 107 |
|
Distribution |
History |
Cross-listed: American Studies
This is a labor history course covering the
colonial era through the present period of U.S. history. But unlike a traditional labor history
course, it does not center mainly on charting the struggle between workers and
employers for reduced hours, better working conditions, enhanced benefits, and
the fundamental right to organize. Nor does it mainly focus on the emergence of
worker cultures in their varying forms.
Rather, while these matters will be covered, the chief concern of the
course will be to construct a narrative of the experience of work and how that
has changed over time within the American context. Thus for each of the time periods surveyed—preindustrial,
industrial, and postindustrial--it will ask what, in fact, have Americans
understood work to mean, and how that meaning in turn influenced the experience
of work itself. More specific questions
for the three major time periods to be surveyed include an interrogation of work
and the relationship between it and leisure, between individual gain and
community good, between survival and comfort, between private goals and
public/national imperatives, between male and female roles, between
“minorities” and mainstream populations, and between income and personal satisfaction.
Finally, a global dimension in the experience of work will shape our
discussions as we consider settlers, slaves, and Native Americans as laborers
in the preindustrial period; immigrant workers in the industrial period; and
corporate cultures of foreign companies operating on U.S. soil in the
postindustrial period.
Course
|
HIST
2124 Wars of Mass
Deception: Vietnam and Iraq
|
|
Professor |
Mark Lytle |
|
CRN |
97017 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 2:30 -3:50 pm OLIN 204 |
|
Distribution |
History |
Cross-listed:
GISP; Human Rights, STS
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 inflicted 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. One question we must consider,
"Did the experience in Vietnam offer lessons that should have kept the
United States out of Iraq or at least suggested a better way to achieve
American objectives?"
Course
|
HIST
2125 Cultural
Capital, Paris 1715-1873
|
|
Professor |
Tabetha Ewing |
|
CRN |
97015 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 6:00 -7:20 pm OLIN 204 |
|
Distribution |
History |
The city tells its stories through neighborhood and parish, gates and
walls, vineyards and graveyards, cafes and restaurants, and street
life: markets, fairs, open-air theater, and scaffolds. Its stories
have been told masterfully. We will read Diderot's enigmatic Rameau's Nephew,
Mercier's descriptive Tableaux, on Benjamin's haunting arcades, on
Haussmanization, and Zola's Belly of Paris; and view maps, engravings, and
Marville's early photographs. The course opens with the gay Regency when great
fortunes were made and lost and all Parisians were caught up in the excitement
of rue Quincampoix's paper money experiment. It ends with the Paris Commune,
its state-sponsored violence and political possibilities. Throughout, we study
urban structures, from language to architecture, as they contributed to the
changing social imaginaries of space.
Course
|
HIST
/ SOC 214 American Immigration
|
|
Professor |
Joel
Perlmann
|
|
CRN |
97020 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 4:00 -5:20 pm OLIN 203 |
|
Distribution |
Social Science
/Rethinking Difference |
Cross-listed:
American Studies, Human Rights, Social Policy, SRE
This course examines American immigration past
and present. It will offer a brief
history of American immigration generally, and a detailed focus on two periods:
the last great immigration before our own times (1890-1920), and the
immigration of today. Throughout, we
will ask how the present American experience is similar to, and how it differs
from, the earlier American experience as "a country of immigrants." Major themes include: who came and
why; the immigrants’ economic impact on American society (including the
economic impact on the native-born poor); how the children of the immigrants
have fared; whiteness, multiculturalism and assimilation; and finally
immigration policy and politics. Readings will be mostly from
social science and history but will also include memoirs, fiction, and policy
debates. Students interested in this course should email Professor Perlmann
prior to registration with a brief description of their background in American
history.
Course
|
HIST
2341
Inventing Modernity: Peasant Commune, Renaissance and Reformation in
|
|
Professor |
Gregory Moynahan |
|
CRN |
97373 |
|
Schedule |
Mon Wed 1:30 -2:50 pm OLIN 205 |
|
Distribution |
History |
Cross-listed: German Studies, Italian Studies, STS
Using as its starting
point Jacob Burckhardt's classic account The Civilization of the Renaissance in
Italy, this course will examine the role of the drastic upheavals of the early
modern period in defining the origins of such modern institutions as
capitalism, political individuality, religious freedom, democracy, and the
modern military. The geographic focus will be the towns, cities, and peasant
communes of the Italian and German speaking regions of Europe, particularly the
Italian peninsula, Holy Roman Empire, and Switzerland. Two apparently
opposed developments will be at the center of our approach: first, the role of
the autonomous peasant commune, particularly in Switzerland, as a model and
spur for political forms such as democracy and anarchism; second, the
development of modern capitalism and technology as they came to impinge on the
traditional feudal and communal orders. The course will also address the
historiography and politics -surrounding the "invention" of the
Renaissance in the late nineteenth century, looking particularly at
Burckhardt's relation with Ranke, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.
Course
|
HIST
245
History of East Central Europe since WWII
|
|
Professor |
Gennady Shkliarevsky |
|
CRN |
97023 |
|
Schedule |
Tu Th 4:00 -5:20 pm OLIN 205 |
|
Distribution |
History |
Cross-listed:
Russian & Eurasian Studies; GISP; Human Rights
East Central Europe is in many respects one of the
most intriguing parts of the world.
Culturally and geographically positioned between the West and Russia, this
ethnically diverse region has experienced in the course of the twentieth
century a very dramatic and paradoxical evolution. After a brief summary of the history of the region prior and
during WWII, we will concentrate on its history since the war and particularly
on those events and developments which reflects its paradoxical evolution. Using a comparative approach, we will
examine a variety of specific topics including political systems, economic
organization, ethnic conflicts, and gender relations. The course will use original sources, films, works of fiction, as
well as scholarly studies. No Prerequisites.
Course
|
HIST
2505 Insurgency and Counterinsurgency
|
|
Professor |
James Spies |
|
CRN |
97516 |
|
Schedule |
Wed 7:00 – 9:20 pm OLIN 205 |
|
Distribution |
History |
The course will work to develop a theoretical,
strategic, and operational understanding of insurgencies. Students will begin by exploring
revolutionary theory; determining why states collapse into revolution. Comparing the exhaustion strategies that
typify successful insurgencies and counterinsurgencies against annihilation
strategies that typify most of Clausewitz and U.S. warfighting doctrine,
students learn how and why these strategies can be advantageous and why U.S.
forces have been slow to grapple with these dilemmas. Using the guidance of historical guerrilla leaders, students will
then investigate examples of insurgent systems in order to understand how these
strategies and operational designs translate into tactical-and often
idiosyncratic-methods. Finally, they
will explore a systemic model of insurgencies that aids analyses of
insurgencies. A review of historical,
current, and imminent doctrine will follow, encouraging comparison, contrast,
and analysis between models that will highlight strengths and weaknesses and
emphasize synchronization with Stability, Security, Transition and
Reconstruction in modern warfare. Texts
will include historical works, as well as classic insurgency tracts from China
and Vietnam and official American, British and French counterinsurgency
manuals, along with current studies of Islamic insurgent tactics and
strategies.
Course
|
HIST
280A
American Environmental History I
|
|
Professor |
Mark Lytle |
|
CRN |
97016 |
|
Schedule |
Wed Fr 10:30 - 11:50 am OLIN 201 |
|
Distribution |
History |
Cross-listed: American Studies, Environmental
Studies; Human Rights; Social Policy
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.
Course
|
HIST
3121
The Case for Liberties
|
|
Professor |
Alice Stroup |
|
CRN |
97027 |
|
Schedule |
Mon 1:30 -3:50 pm OLIN 308 |
|
Distribution |
History |
Related interest: French
Studies; Human Rights
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).
Course
|
HIST 3123 The Law & Theory of War: From Agincourt to the Global War
on Terror |
|
Professor |
Peter Maguire |
|
CRN |
97018 |
|
Schedule |
Th 9:30 - 11:50 am OLIN 307 |
|
Distribution |
History |
Cross-list: Human Rights; STS
This course will examine the laws and customs of
war from the Treaty of Westphalia to the Global War on Terror. After
considering both the customary and codified sources of law (the Chivalric Code,
the Lieber Code, Hague Conventions, and Nuremberg Principles), students will
examine a variety of examples of political justice: the Santee Sioux, Henry
Wirz, Jacob Smith, Llandovery Castle, Leipzig, Malmedy, Yamashita,
Nuremberg, Calley, Padilla, and Guantanomo Bay. Students will be responsible for oral presentations
and a variety of writing assignments.
Course
|
HIST
3491 History of Sexuality
|
|
Professor |
George Robb |
|
CRN |
97021 |
|
Schedule |
Mon 1:30 -3:50 pm OLIN 307 |
|
Distribution |
History |
Cross-listed:
Gender and Sexuality Studies; STS
The purpose of this course is to develop a critical
understanding of how definitions of human sexuality have developed 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. We will focus primarily on western
Europe and North America during the 19th and 20th
centuries, but will be sensitive to issues of race and colonialism
Course
|
HIST
3531
Oral History Seminar
|
|
Professor |
Peter Maguire |
|
CRN |
97402 |
|
Schedule |
Tu 1:30 -3:50 pm OLIN 304 |
|
Distribution |
History
|
This seminar will focus on practical, technical,
and legal aspects of conducting interviews. Each student will be
responsible for conducting a two-part oral history interview. After their
project designs have been approved, students will conduct their initial
interviews. After the class has critiqued their interviews, students will
conduct follow up sessions. Students will be responsible for conducting a
two-part interview, transcribing the results, and leading the
discussion/critique of another interview. The course seeks to convey very practical knowledge about
how to win trust and conduct interviews in a variety of circumstances. Students
considering or already involved in research projects requiring review and
approval by the college's IRB (Institutional Review Board) would especially
benefit from this course.
Course
|
HIST
371
The Civil Rights Movement
|
|
Professor |
Myra Armstead |
|
CRN |
97010 |
|
Schedule |
Mon 9:30 - 11:50 am OLIN 204 |
|
Distribution |
History / Rethinking
Difference |
Cross-listed:
American Studies; Human Rights; Social Policy; SRE
The Civil Rights Movement of and/or for African Americans
is generally contextualized within the postwar 1950s and the liberal ferment of
the early 1960s. This course stretches this temporal
trajectory by reaching back to the Reconstruction era and forward to the
transformation of the movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Civil Rights Movement will first be
viewed conventionally as a human rights struggle by black Americans for social
inclusion on the political/legal front.
But it will also be treated as a push for social inclusion on two
additional fronts—economic and cultural.
The movement will thus be assessed for its ability or inability to
balance all three concerns. As such,
the movement provides an index of the historical systemic flexibility and
structural rigidity of access to the American bonanza.