91508

HIST  100   

 Ancient History

Carolyn Dewald

M . W . .

3:10 pm -4:30 pm

OLIN 201

HIST

Cross-listed:  Classical Studies The course has two main purposes: first, to see how much is implied by the notion of historical causation and what it means to 'think historically'; second, to gain a sense of the way the foundations of western culture were first shaped in the Near East and then developed quite distinctively in the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome.  We will begin with the beginnings of recorded civilization in the Near East about 7000 BCE and will move fairly quickly through the Neolithic period, to the urban revolution of the third millennium (early Bronze Age). The focus then will sharpen to the Mediterranean basin: Greece (c.1600-320 BCE) and Rome (c. 600 BCE-430 CE).  The main emphasis of the course will be on these latter two cultures and understanding how they came to be shaped in quite different and distinctive ways.  We will also, however, focus on the chronological and causal sweep of ancient Mediterranean culture as a whole, from its first beginnings to the death of St. Augustine, with the Vandals storming the gates of Carthage.  We will look at underlying features of geography and demography, archaeology (and how to read archaeological remains historically), developments in technology and trade, religion, politics, family organization, communities and governments,  art and literacy -- and we will try to consider how all these different kinds of causally-linked factors come together in different ways, at different points in the chronological and geographical continuum of the ancient Mediterranean world. Class size: 25

 

91501

HIST / JS  101   

 Introduction to Jewish Studies

Cecile Kuznitz

M . W . .

3:10 pm -4:30 pm

OLIN 204

HUM/DIFF

Cross-listed: Religion  This interdisciplinary course will introduce students to major themes in the field of Jewish Studies. The primary focus will be on the history of the Jewish people and on Judaism as a religion, but we will also examine topics in Jewish literature, society, and politics. The course will treat selected themes from the Biblical period to the present, but with a greater emphasis on the medieval and especially the modern period. Among the issues to be explored: What role has the Land of Israel played in Jewish life, and how have Jews responded to their nearly 2,000-year experience of exile and Diaspora? How have they negotiated both the “push” of antisemitism and the “pull” of assimilation to maintain distinct forms of community and identity? What role have various types of texts played in Jewish culture, and what is their relationship to lived Jewish experience? Finally, what are the implications of such momentous recent events as the Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel, and the rise of the American Jewish community?

Class size: 22

 

91894

HIST  112   

 THREE CITIES: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE URBAN HISTORIES OF Lagos, Nairobi, & Johannesburg

Drew Thompson

M . W . .

10:10 am -11:30 am

OLIN 205

HIST

Cross-listed: Africana Studies, Environmental & Urban Studies; Global & Int’l Studies Human Rights  This introductory course in African history traces the development of Lagos, Nairobi, and Johannesburg, beginning before 1850, with people’s first encounters with the concept of the ‘city.’ We will continue into the contemporary period, exploring the impact of colonization, apartheid, as well as globalization in the post-independence era. Students will explore each city through the perspectives of the very people who participated in their construction. The class will not merely look at the infrastructure of these cities, but also incorporate music, films, and theatrical plays to consider their underworlds, from the slums to the shopping centers. Class size: 22

 

91895

HIST  130   

 Origins of American Citizen

Christian Crouch

M . W . .

11:50 am -1:10 pm

OLIN 202

HIST

Cross-listed:  American Studies; Africana Studies; Human Rights 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.  Class size: 22

 

91896

HIST  134   

 THE Ottomans & THE Last Islamic EmpIRE

Omar Cheta

. T . Th .

10:10 am -11:30 am

OLIN 205

HIST

Cross-listed:  Global & Int’l Studies; Middle Eastern Studies  In the aftermath of World War I, the Ottoman Empire disappeared from the world scene. In its place arose numerous states, which today make up the Middle East and significant parts of Eastern Europe. In all of these “post-Ottoman” states, the memory of the Ottoman Empire is well and alive. For example, it is in relation to the Ottoman legacy that modern Middle Eastern and East European national identities were constructed and claims to national borders settled (or not). This course is a general historical survey of Ottoman history from the founding of the empire around 1300 until its collapse in the aftermath of World War I. The course covers major topics in Ottoman history, including the empire’s origins, its Islamic and European identities, everyday life under the Ottomans, inter-communal relations, the challenge of separatist movements (Balkan, Greek, Arab) and the emergence of modern Turkish nationalism. Class size: 22

 

91897

HIST  140   

 IntroDUCTION to Russian Civilization

Gennady Shkliarevsky

. T . Th .

1:30 pm -2:50 pm

OLIN 301

HIST

Cross-listed: Medieval Studies, Russian and Eurasian Studies   This course examines the origins and evolution of Russian civilization from the founding of the first Eastern Slavic state through the eighteenth century, when Russia began to modernize by borrowing from Western culture. Among the topics to be considered are the ethnogeny of early Russians, the development of state and legal institutions, the relationship between kinship and politics, the role of religion in public and private spheres, economic organization, social institutions, family, gender relations, sexuality, popular culture, and the impact of the outside world (both Orient and Occident) upon Russian society. The sources include a variety of Russian cultural expressions (folk tales, literature, art, film, music), original documents, and scholarly texts.  Class size: 20

 

91898

HIST  143   

 European Diplomatic History,

 1648-1914

Sean McMeekin

M . W . .

11:50 am -1:10 pm

RKC 102

HIST

Cross-listed:  Global & Int’l Studies A survey of the major developments in European diplomatic history between the Treaty of Westphalia and the outbreak of World War I.  Key themes of discussion will include the changing nature of diplomacy and international order; the rise of the nation state and standing armies; war finance and the bond market; the French Revolutionary upheaval, the Industrial Revolution, and ideological responses to them (eg, liberalism, nationalism/irredentism, conservatism, socialism, and anarchism).  The course concludes with an examination of the high era of imperialism and the origins of the First World War.  Class size: 22

 

91899

HIST  153   

 Diaspora & Homeland:

A GLOBAL CORE  COURSE

Myra Armstead /

Cecile Kuznitz

M . W . .

1:30 pm -2:50 pm

OLIN 102

HIST/DIFF

Cross-listed:  American Studies; Africana Studies; Global & Int’l Studies; Human Rights; Jewish Studies; Related interest: Asian Studies  The concept of Diaspora has gained widespread popularity as a way of thinking about group identity and its relationship to place. In an era of increasing globalization individuals are more likely to emigrate to distant shores, although this is in fact a longstanding historical phenomenon. Homelands in turn have taken on multiple, complex meanings in the imaginations and lived experience of migrant populations, particularly in recent times as technological and transportation innovations facilitate the maintenance of links with native lands.  In this course we will read recent theoretical works on Diaspora and then examine case studies of diasporic populations from ancient times to the present.  We will inquire about the extent to which Diaspora is celebrated or lamented, how this attitude affects real and imagined ties to homelands.  While our focus will be chiefly on diasporic peoples themselves, we will examine the perspective of native/homeland populations on such issues as well.  Case studies will include the first and longest-lived diasporic minority group, the Jewish people; black African-descended people since the trans-Atlantic slave trade; and Chinese and South Asian migrant populations.  Class size: 44

 

91903

HIST  2035   

 The Wars of Religion

Tabetha Ewing

. T . Th .

6:20 pm -7:40 pm

OLIN 101

HIST/DIFF

Cross-listed: Gender & Sexuality Studies,  Human Rights   Religion and revolution have formed an unholy alliance at several distinct moments in history. This course is a journey across the motley religious landscape of early modern Europe in which the ideas and practices of heretics, infidels, and unbelievers nestled in the spaces where orthodox Catholicism held sway. Periodically, heads of state or household sought to bring order to it; and people –royal subjects, wives, children, servants-- resisted. The 16th and 17th centuries were a time in which religious revolution and new ways of ordering spiritual life exploded in a fashion that no one could have anticipated. In the period we now term "the Reformations" Europe would reinvent itself at home and discover itself in the New World. Also, the power of women as a source of threat and of sectarian strength emerges as a primary site for reformation processes. From the expulsion of Iberian Jews and Muslims to European contact with "cannabalism," from Luther in Germany to Carmelites nuns in Canada, from witchcraft to the cult of Mary, from incantation to exorcism, students will trace the personal stories of real people through Inquisition records, diaries and conversion tales, early pamphlets, and accounts of uprisings. We will look at how radical religious ideologies sustained themselves in the face of official repression and, more challenging still, official approval. Open to first year students.    Class size: 22

 

91904

HIST  2110   

 Early Middle Ages

Alice Stroup

. T . Th .

10:10 am -11:30 am

OLIN 203

HIST

Cross-listed:  Classical Studies, Medieval 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 eight centuries, focused around the formation and spread of Christianity and Islam in the Mediterranean, European, and Nordic worlds. Topics include religions and polities; roles of Jews and Judaism; monuments (a temple, churches, and mosques) and their meanings; and the transformations of the Mediterranean, the Near East, northern Atlantic, and Europe, 200-1000 CE.  Readings include Boethius's early 6th-century Consolation of Philosophy plus modern analyses by David Abulafia, Peter Brown, David Levering Lewis, Jerrilyn Dodds, Jessica Coope, Maria Rosa Menocal, and other scholars.   Class size: 22

 

91976

HIST  2112   

 The Invention of Politics

Tabetha Ewing

. T . Th .

4:40 pm -6:00 pm

OLIN 101

HIST

Cross-listed: Human Rights   Individuals and groups spoke, wrote, and fought to make their claims to public power in the period between 1500 and 1800 in ways that forced a reimagining of political relationships.  The greatest institutions in place, particularly monarchies and the papacy, used their arsenals of words, documents, symbols, and ritual to maintain their legitimacy in the face of subtle or uproarious resistance.  The tension between or, more accurately, among groups created new political vocabularies to which we, in our present, have claimed historical ownership or explicitly rejected.

Class size: 20

 

91900

HIST  2118   

 Soviet Russia, 1917-1991

Sean McMeekin

M . W . .

1:30 pm -2:50 pm

HEG 308

HIST

Cross-listed:  Global & Int’l Studies, Political Studies, Russian & Eurasian Studies  This course examines the Russian Revolution and Civil War; the New Economic Policy and the succession struggle after Lenin; the major phases of Stalinism, from collectivization and the Five Year Plans to the Great Terror, the “Great Patriotic War” (i.e, World War II) and the onset of the Cold War; the volatile Khrushchev era; “soft repression” and the growth of the Soviet bureaucratic elite of cadres (nomenklatura) under Brezhnev; the Kosygin reforms and efforts to improve Soviet economic performance; the KGB directorates and their roles in foreign espionage and domestic repression; dissidents and samizdat; Soviet foreign policy; the Soviet economic crisis of the 1980s and the rise to power of Gorbachev, perestroika and glasnost’; the re-emergence of submerged nations in the Baltics, Ukraine, and the Caucasus, and the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Class size: 22

 

91902

HIST  2123   

 FROM ANALOG TO DIGITAL: PhotoGRAPHY & Visual History in Africa

Drew Thompson

M . W . .

11:50 am -1:10 pm

OLINLC 120

HIST

Cross-listed:  Africana Studies, Experimental Humanities, Global  & Int’l Studies, Human Rights  As technology and practice of image making, photography in Africa evolved alongside territorial imperialism and globalization. In turn, the image and its archiving were critical facets of the continent’s histories of liberation and post-independence. This survey introduces students to the historical development of photography in Africa and the historical use of photographs in the late-nineteenth century to recent times. Divided into five parts, the course begins with different theoretical views on the relationship between photography and history. After a consideration of the photography of the royal courts in North Africa and Christian missionaries in West Africa, the class will shift to the role of photography in the making of independent African nations and their liberation struggles during and after World War II. The course concludes by considering the commodization of African photography at international biennales and its functions for single-party regimes that continue to rule across Sub-Saharan Africa. Key themes include photography’s role in shaping historical knowledge and the representation of Africa and its peoples, the appropriation of image making into African creative practices and daily life, the politics of exhibition and archiving, and the ethics of seeing war and social justice. Students will design a historical photography exhibition, and, over the course of the semester, they will also have the opportunity to interact with leading photography curators, photojournalists and art photographers who have spent time in Africa.  Class size: 22

 

91906

HIST  2127   

 THE GENEALOGY OF Modern RevolutionS IN  THE Middle East

Omar Cheta

. T . Th .

11:50 am -1:10 pm

HEG 308

HIST

Cross-listed:  Global & Int’l Studies, Human Rights, Middle East Studies  The revolutions (some would say “uprisings”) that are unfolding in several Arab countries since December 2010 have taken the world by surprise. Until then, commentators in the West and the Middle East alike have described the political culture of the Arab world as “apathetic” and “prone to authoritarianism.” In this class, we will explore the long history of modern revolutions (& uprisings) in the Middle East. The class will focus on several themes such as the diverse histories of revolutions, their inherent contradictions and often irreconcilable demands as well as the intellectual aspects of these popular political actions. In exploring these themes, we will discuss examples of non-violent revolutions, militant revolts, labor strikes and coups d’etat. Through studying these examples we will consider the structural limitations of these movements. We will also seek to understand how the memory of these moments of intense change informed the recent (ongoing?) revolutionary moment. 

Class size: 22

 

91907

HIST  2134   

 Comparative Atlantic SLAVE Societies

Christian Crouch

M . W . .

1:30 pm -2:50 pm

OLIN 204

HIST

Cross-listed:  Africana Studies, American Studies, French Studies, Human Rights, LAIS  Forced labor, whether indentured or enslaved, underpinned the early modern Atlantic world.  Beginning in the early sixteenth century, millions of enslaved Africans and indigenous Americans came to or moved around the Americas.  The wide variety of societies bordering the Atlantic that created these zones of interaction became places of contested and changing cultural practice.  Peoples of African, Native American, and mixed descent not only struggled to survive in the early modern Atlantic but also to fundamentally shape these new locations as many fought to gain or preserve their freedom.  Historians in the last thirty years have demonstrated how the territories bordering this ocean were an English Atlantic, a Dutch Atlantic, a French Atlantic, and an Iberian Atlantic. Yet the actors and agents who shaped or were shaped by Atlantic systems are often hidden in the record by virtue of being indigenous, enslaved, or indentured.  Students of history, need to consider why it is important to restore a “Kongolese,” “Cherokee,” or “métis” Atlantic to the established set of European empires that are all-too-often seen to dominate the Atlantic world perspective.   This course focuses on the African and indigenous Atlantics, and looks at a world of comparative slave societies in this early modern zone.  It considers three important issues: the comparative development of slavery, the methods of resistance, and the processes of emancipation and national formations at the end of the eighteenth century. Studying the differing experiences of Africans around the Atlantic and how they helped to shape the diversity of the colonial experience will enable students to trace the initial development of “African American” culture, as well as “Afro-Brazilian,” “Afro-Mexican,” or “Afro-Caribbean” cultures.  We will investigate what the implications are of how we write or remember the history of this region and trace the intersections that created race, gender, and class through slave societies. The course will end in the early years of the “age of emancipations,” with the most famous of all slave rebellions: the Haitian Revolution.  This cataclysmic event gave rise to the world’s first black republic and if the rhetoric of empire ushered in the birth of the “Atlantic World,” we live today with the mature, and lasting, effects and memories of these vital interactions.  Class size: 22

 

91937

HIST  2136   

 Reason & Revolution: EUROPEAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY TO 1870

Gregory Moynahan

. T . Th .

1:30 pm -2:50 pm

OLIN 310

HIST

Cross-listed: French Studies, German Studies, Science, Technology & Society,  Victorian Studies

The course will outline some of the principle transformations in the modern understanding of society and nature within a political, cultural, and institutional framework.  Particular attention will be placed on the interrelation of science, theology and philosophy that characterized the period from Descartes and Leibniz to Mach and Nietzsche.  Our attention will largely focus on the nineteenth century, using as our guide a close reading of texts from writers such as Vico, Kant, Hegel, Wollstonecraft, Burke, Fourier, Bakunin, Marx and Darwin.  Texts will be read in conjunction with a selected study of contemporary political forces, institutional settings, and scientific, social, or artistic practices. Major topics of interest include skepticism, the interrelation of enlightenment and romanticism, feminism, conservatism, utopian socialism, nationalism and anarchism.  Please note that this course is not intended for first year students; a prerequisite for it is the second half of First Year Seminar. Class size: 20

 

91908

HIST  2307   

 The American Dream

Myra Armstead

. T . Th .

1:30 pm -2:50 pm

OLIN 202

HIST

Cross-listed:  American Studies, Sociology  “But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement."  These words from James Truslow Adams summarize the optimism and sense of exceptionalism that have defined much of American experience.  In this course, we will consider the various articulations of the Dream, the ideological and structural supports for the Dream, limits of the Dream, and how these have changed over time.   We will look briefly and comparatively at alternative dreams, e.g, the, the new “European Dream,” in an effort to assess implicit understandings of the Dream's uniqueness, and critiques of the Dream within a global context.   Class size: 22

 

91909

HIST  2703   

 FROM THE HOLOCAUST MUSEUM TO THE HISTORY CHANNEL: Public History in the U. S.

Cynthia Koch

. T . Th .

1:30 pm -2:50 pm

OLIN 203

HIST

Cross-listed:  American Studies  History is an academic subject, yet most people encounter it outside the academy. They watch TV documentaries and historical films, visit museums and historic sites, and travel to historic places.  All of these are examples of public history.  It is here that history has a definitive role in community and national discourse—sometimes involving pointed political debate.  Why did the United States drop the atomic bomb? Why did so few stand against slavery? Is it possible to ever adequately represent the Holocaust?  This introduction to the field of public history will look at the role that historians and other academics play in shaping the institutions and practice of public history and the relationship(s) among public history, American culture, and popular memory.  It will also address the practical aspects of career opportunities and internships in this field such as curatorship, documentary film, archival work, historic preservation, and community building. This course is open to all interested students without any assumption of a background in history.   Class size: 22

 

91901

HIST  279   

 THE OTHER Europe

Gennady Shkliarevsky

M . W . .

3:10 pm -4:30 pm

OLIN 310

HIST

Cross Listed:  Global & Int’l Studies;  Human Rights; Russian and Eurasian Studies   The course will cover the history of East Central Europe from 1945 to the present. After a brief summary of the history of the region before and during World War II, the course will concentrate on the region’s evolution since the war. In addition to surveying the period and examining the turning points in its evolution (for example, the Berlin uprising of 1953, the Hungarian revolution and reforms in Poland in 1956, the "Prague spring" of 1968, the Solidarity movement in Poland, and the revolutions at the end of the 1980s), we will explore a variety of specific topics, including political systems, economic organization, ethnic conflicts, and gender relations. Readings will include a textbook, specialized studies, original sources, and works of fiction. Class size: 20

 

91911

HIST  3102   

 Research Seminar in U. S.  URBAN  History

Myra Armstead

. T . . .

3:10 pm -5:30 pm

OLIN 309

HIST

Cross-listed:  American Studies, Environmental & Urban Studies  Ideally, students in this course will have taken History 232, American Urban History, although this is not required.  The course will provide an opportunity for students to pursue specialized study and research in American urban history.  Students interested in urban space and its meanings, urban planning and design, new urbanism, suburbanism, the postmodern city, urban politics, urban infrastructure, and urban culture are especially invited in this course to bring their individual topics to the table, although additional subjects can be imagined. The class will initially consider a common set of readings having to do with urban historiography.  Class organization will then shift to focus on individual student research projects, and the literature and methods informing them. All students will produce a long research paper.  Class size: 15

 

91922

HIST  3112   

 PLAGUE!

Alice Stroup

M . . . .

1:30 pm -3:50 pm

OLIN 308

HIST

Cross-listed:  Environmental & Urban Studies; Global & Int’l Studies; Human Rights; Medieval Studies   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.   Class size: 15

 

91912

HIST  3148   

 READING THE Postcolonial IN  African History & AFRICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT

Drew Thompson

. T . . .

10:10 am -12:30 pm

OLINLC 115

HIST

Cross-listed:  Africana Studies, Global & Int’l Studies, Human Rights, Political Studies  Africa’s history has been framed around the moment of colonial contact and the resulting chronological constructions of pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial. Scholars have interpreted this idea of the post-colonial as a temporal disjuncture, after colonialism. This class is a course in the reading of theory and the history of theory in Africa, and it will shift away from the temporal understanding of the post-colonial concept in order to conceptualize the postcolonial (without a hyphen) as a theoretical shift and site of engagement over the discourses of colonialism, nationalism, race, and globalization. Drawing from scholars and political theorists from the African continent as well as Subaltern Studies, students will cover the topics of historiography, the relationship of power to knowledge production, and critiques of colonialism, nationalism, and apartheid.  Class size: 15

 

91910

HIST  3229   

 Before Bard and Beyond: A Public History Practicum on the Hudson Valley

Cynthia Koch

. . . . F

1:30 pm -3:50 pm

OLIN 309

HIST

Cross-listed:  American Studies, Art History For millennia the Hudson Valley has sustained human communities that exploited the rich resources of the valley to support themselves. Although people continued to earn a living from the land, in the late 1700s the Hudson Valley began to be prized for its beauty as well as its utility.  Elites began to build large country houses surrounded by “pleasure grounds” that overlooked the river. The Bard campus comprises three of these estates as well a well as Native American sites and early farms.  In this course students will explore the history of the nearby Hudson Valley in order to produce a collaborative public history exhibit.  Who were the early farmers and tenants?  What is the history of Tivoli, Red Hook, Rhinebeck, Barrytown? Who built the estates? What inspired them? Who worked them? The goal of the course is for each student to curate an individual exhibit on the topic of his/her choice that contributes to a collaborative on-line exhibit on the history of Bard’s immediate surroundings. Students will research images and narrative content during class time and on field/research trips to nearby archives and historic sites. They will learn to use Dublin Core metadata standards and Omeka open source online exhibit-building software. (This exhibit will build upon previous student work at http://omekalib.bard.edu/exhibits/show/before_bard.) The completion of the exhibit constitutes the primary work of this course. Students will need a laptop. Class size: 15

 

91913

HIST  3234   

 Your Papers Please? TECHNOCRACY, TECHNOLOGY & SOCIAL CONTROL IN NAZI GERMANY, THE DDR AND THE BRD

Gregory Moynahan

M . . . .

1:30 pm -3:50 pm

OLIN 101

HIST

Cross-listed:  German Studies  In this research course, we will address the coercive and violent powers of the modern state as they were refined through technologies and techniques in National Socialist Germany, and then alternately condemned and utilized in the two German nations of the (East) German Democratic Republic (DDR) and the (West) German Federal Republic (BRD).  Topics will range from the development of new techniques of propaganda and military oversight to the manipulation of social technologies such as identification papers, the census, racial pseudo-science, and, most horrifically, the concentration camp system.  At the end of the Nazi period, the DDR defined itself through its resistance to the Nazi party, and nearly the entirety of its ideology was grounded in anti-Fascism and cosmopolitanism.  The means of organizing and controlling society were often directly carried over from the Nazi past.  Similarly, the liberal capitalist ideology of the BRD defined itself in complete opposition to the Nazi past, but here as well there were surprising number holdovers from the Nazi era, ranging from the system of registering with the police to the retention of leading bureaucrats.  By comparing the two movements, ideologically complete opposites yet organizationally often surprisingly similar, we can address some of the most disturbing issues of modern techniques of social control.  Similarly, protests within each system against specific moments of state power – ranging from issues such as the use of the census and identity cards to methods of police surveillance and conscription – were frequently couched in terms of their links with the Nazi era.  Please note that the core of this course will be spent writing and refining an independent historical research paper of approximately 35 pages in length.  No previous knowledge of German history is required, although students without such knowledge will need to set aside time for some background reading.  Class size: 15

 

91997

HIST 325

 FOUR CASE STUDIES OF

REVOLUTIONARY VIOLENCE

Wendy Urban-Mead

. . . Th .

6:00 pm-8:20 pm

OLIN 204

HIST

As a course in World History students will be comparing four revolutionary case studies from South Africa, France, Russia, and China.

The question of violence - the violence of repressive governments, revolutionary violence, and counter-revolutionary violence– is a theme that we shall trace across all the case studies. We shall seek to understand each revolution in terms of both indigenously generated dynamics as well as world-historical factors. Engaging with each case separately and then in comparison with the others opens up consideration of the potential problems and benefits involved in applying world-historical concepts of change to individual cases.  Theoretical readings include Skocpol, Goldstone, and Fanon. This is a graduate level class offered jointly by the MAT and the college. This course is cross-listed with the MAT program for 3+2 seniors seeking certification in social studies/history.