Course no. HIST 106
Title From Empire to Superpower
Professor Mark Lytle
Schedule Wed Fri 10:30 am-12:00 pm Olin 204
Distrib. C
CRN 93174

Cross-listed: American Studies

This course examines the international role of the United States in the twentieth century. Special attention is given to the roles of corporations, the military, the intelligence community, and other special interest groups. The course covers Versailles, the rise of fascism, Pearl Harbor, the decision to drop the atom bomb, the Cold War, and Vietnam. Students will be asked to weigh the role of economic, strategic, and moral concepts in the formulation of American policy.



Course no. HIST 116
Title Nazi Germany and the Holocaust
Professor John Fout
Schedule Tue Th 10:30 am-12:00 pm Olin 201
Distrib. C
CRN 93434

Cross-listed: German Studies

of related interest: Gender Studies

This course is an in depth examination of totalitarianism and the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. A number of topics will be chosen for emphasis, including: World War I; the political crises of the Weimar Republic; the rise of the Nazi movement and the collapse of democracy; the central role and personality of Adolf Hitler; the Nazi seizure of power and the establishment of the totalitarian state; fascism; the crisis in gender relations because of Nazi sexual politics and the treatment of women; Nazi anti-Semitism; World War II; and the Holocaust. In the case of the latter, some of the current debates will be discussed in detail.



Course no. HIST 121
Title A Multicultural History of the United States
Professor Gloria Chun
Schedule Tue Th 9:00 am-10:20 am Olin 203
Distrib. A/C
CRN 93196

Cross-listed: American Studies, MES
of related interest: AADS

An inter-disciplinary and comparative approach to the history and critical theories of "race" and multiculturalism in the United States. Particular focus will be placed on the Native American, the African American, and the Latina/o, Asian American, Jewish American, and Irish American experience. By way of comparison the U.S. context, we will also touch on race relations in South Africa and Europe. This is the "core" course in Multicultural and Ethnic Studies.



Course no. HIST 124
Title Enlightenment Culture in 18th Century France
Professor Tabetha Ewing
Schedule Tue Th 1:20 pm-2:40 pm Olin 205
Distrib. C/D
CRN 93177

Cross-listed: French Studies

The Enlightenment has fallen off its throne in recent historical account. Many scholars question just how committed to liberty, equality, and fraternity were its proponents, and ask how slavery, privilege, and misogyny were implicated in the formation of these great ideals. Moreover, the rationalist discourse of the Enlightenment has been compromised by its use as a tool of racial and cultural supremacists. Some of the most creative historical scholarship has dedicated itself to broadening and enlivening the debate. "enlightenment" with a small "e" explores the 18th-century fascination and commitment to unveilings. Elites as well as those without wealth, status, formal education, or political connections were preoccupied with revealing religious mysteries, uncovering the secrets of the absolutist state, exposing personal scandals, and disrobing their king. We will read some of the most amusing texts of the renowned Enlightenment writers including Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, and Holbach, thumb through the Old Regime newspapers, discuss pornographic pamphlets, listen in on conversations in salons, cafés, and to rumor in the streets. We will explore the political seriousness of these playful and fugitive texts with the general goal of defining what enlightenment was lived it. In examining the writers and their ideas, their audiences and the reception of those ideas, the significance of the salon or café as a forum, and the role of the absolutist state, students will draw their own conclusions about where we should situate enlightenment studies today. First-year students encouraged.



Course no. HIST 140
Title The Land of the Golden Cockerel: Introduction to Russian Civilization
Professor Gennady Shkliarevsky
Schedule Tue Th 10:30 am-11:50 am Olin 205
Distrib. C/D
CRN 93175

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.



Course no. HIST 206
Title Ethnicity, Gender, Race and/or Class: Understanding U.S. Labor History
Professor Myra Armstead
Schedule Tue Th 8:50 am-10:20 am Olin 201
Distrib. C
CRN 93444

Cross-listed: American Studies, Gender Studies, LAIS, MES

This course assumes that the history of labor in America is tied to the narrative of cultural diversity and the formation of individual and group identity in this country. It therefore explores the historical construction of race, gender, class, and ethnicity by American workers as they move in and out of multiple social spaces over time.



Course no. HIST 212
Title Melting Pot/Salad/Mosaic/Symphony: Immigration and Ethnicity in the United States: A History
Professor Joel Perlmann
Schedule Th 3:40 pm-5:40 pm Olin 107
Distrib. C
CRN 93443

Cross-listed: American Studies, MES
of related interest: AADS

This is the first half of a full-year sequence. What metaphor best fits the experience of American immigrant and ethnic dynamics? Have groups 'melted' into one, been tossed about while yet preserving their distinctiveness, fitted neatly into patterns, or expressed themselves differently yet in harmony? This course will explore the experiences of immigrants to the United States and the experience of the United States with its many waves of immigrants. We will study how and why immigrants came, and how they adjusted to and transformed American society -- its economy, culture and politics. The course will also explore in detail the evolution of immigrants into ethnics: how the descendants of immigrants (children, grandchildren and still later-generation descendants) related to their immigrant roots, how the dynamics of cultural pluralism and assimilation were expressed over time, and to what extent the United States was a multicultural society over the course of its history. We will take a roughly chronological approach, dealing in the first semester with immigration and ethnicity from colonial times until the end of unrestricted immigration from Europe in the 1920s. In the second semester we will follow the story into the present. Major themes will then include the evolution of European immigrants' descendants into "white Americans," American immigration policy after the 1920s, the characteristics of the immigration of our own time, how this recent immigration compares to the last great wave of immigration and what the comparison suggests about ethnic pluralism today. Throughout both semesters, the course will try to strike a balance between generalizing about all, or most, groups and dealing in detail with the concrete experiences of specific immigrant groups. We will also try to strike a balance between readings from the work of historians and social scientists and readings from periods and people being studied.



Course no. HIST 217
Title Conflict and Exchange: Jews, Greeks, Romans, and Christians
Professor Eric Orlin
Schedule Wed Fri 1:20 pm-2:40 pm Olin 205
Distrib. C/D
CRN 93176

Cross-listed: Classical Studies, Jewish Studies, Religion

This course will examine the interactions between four religious traditions: Jewish, Greek, Roman, and Christian. We shall first study the early development of each tradition, so as to better understand the interplay between them during the period 200 BCE to 200 CE. In some cases the interplay led to attempts at suppression, but in many cases the result was a syncretism of certain important elements, and one focus of our investigation will be to understand the reasons why syncretism was possible in some places and at some times, but not in others. Topics that will recur during our discussions include: the nature of religious authority, the purpose of religious systems, written sacred texts vs. orality, polytheism vs. monotheism, tolerance and persecution, ritual and sacred space, and religion and state, including the issue of national/religious identity. Readings will be drawn from a variety of Greek and Roman sources as well as the Old and New Testaments, including the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.



Course no. HIST 230
Title The Fabulous Fifties
Professor Mark Lytle
Schedule Tue 3:40 pm-5:20 pm Lang. Ctr. 115
Distrib. C
CRN 93181

Cross-listed: American Studies

The course measures the impact of the Depression and New Deal legacies and the Cold War consensus on the United States after World War II. It examines areas of popular culture (rock and roll), intellectual trends, social trends (conformity), and politics (the Fair Deal and McCarthyism) as they were affected by American efforts to find security in the face of rising prosperity and the communist menace.



Course no. HIST 232
Title American Urban History
Professor Myra Armstead
Schedule Mon Wed 8:50 am-10:20 am Olin 203
Distrib. C
CRN 93181

Cross-listed: American Studies, CRES
of related interest: AADS

The course is a study of urbanization in America as a social process best understood by relevant case studies. Topics will include the establishment of the nations urban network, the changing function of cities, the European roots of American city layout and governance, urban social structure, the emergence of urban culture, and American views of cities.



Course no. HIST 260
Title Lesbian and Gay History in Modern Western Culture
Professor John Fout
Schedule Tue Th 1:20pm - 2:40 pm Aspinwall 302
Distrib. C
CRN 93432

Cross-listed: Gender Studies

This course surveys the lesbian and gay experience as well as same-sex relations (homosexuality) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries across Western culture. Writings by and about lesbian women and gay men will be equally considered. A number of issues will be examined in depth, including: the vast differences in the lives and experiences of lesbian women and gay men; the medicalization and demedicalization of homosexuality; the criminalization of sodomy and the European--especially the German--and American gay rights movements; the emergence of modern urban gay subcultures and modern gay identity; gays in the military; the persecution of homosexuals by the Nazis; and gay writing in recent decades. New theoretical work will also be examined, including Foucault and the so-called "essentialist-social constructionist" debate, as well as queer theory.



Course no. HIST 279
Title The Other Europe: History of East Central Europe since WWII
Professor Gennady Shkliarevsky
Schedule Mon Wed 1:20 pm-2:50 pm Olin 310
Distrib. C/D
CRN 93182

Cross-listed: 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.



Course no. HIST 284
Title Women and Chinese Modernity: Gender and the "Orient"
Professor Charlotte Furth
Schedule Th 2:50 pm-4:50 pm Olin 204

Fri 10:00 am-12:00 pm Olin 303

Distrib. C/D
CRN 93441

Cross-listed: Asian Studies, Gender Studies

Gender Studies have been around the academy for more than a generation now. We all know that this scholarly explosion is closely associated with the "second wave" of feminism in the North Atlantic countries. What happens when the questions and methods of inquiry feminist scholarship has explored in "the West" move "East? Feminist scholarship on China began in the North American academy, and so far it has developed a number of stories and themes: we have discussed tradition and modernization with respect to family and kinship roles; we have looked at women's work and economic development; we have told a story of emancipation struggles and revolution and asked whether socialism liberates women; we have tried to deconstruct the gendered Chinese body, and to locate gender in the matrix of race and class relations. Such questions and the answers we give them bring us to issues of "Orientalism." To understand better the way gender is involved in "Orientalist" constructions of Asia as an oppositional "other" for "the West" the class will look at some theoretical critiques of Western feminism and "third world" women. We will think about such questions as: Who can speak of or for the category "Chines Women?" Does crossing the Pacific provide a point of view from which to criticize and deepen North Atlantic interpretations of gender? Who is "we?" Then we will turn to academic work that has been done in the past twenty years on the history (and anthropology) of gender relations in late imperial and Modern China. Here the class focus will be on the theme of body and society. At the end, we will look at some recent writings from the PRC and Taiwan where Chinese women scholars and activists offer their own views on "feminism with Chinese characteristics." The Thursday meeting will be the regular seminar. The Friday session will provide an additional hour for discussion, and will be divided between students who have a background in Chinese, and those who do not.



Course no. HIST 285
Title Ancient Greece
Professor Eric Orlin
Schedule Tue Th 2:50 pm-4:10 pm Olin 310
Distrib. C/D
CRN 93180

Cross-listed: Classical Studies

This course will focus on key components of ancient Greek civilization from the Trojan War down to the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE. Special attention will be paid to Greek social and cultural institutions, and particularly the unique institution of the Greek city-state. Although modern attention tends to focus on Athens, with her democracy and her great cultural achievements, many Greeks had more respect for Sparta, whose society was almost completely antithetical to Athens. Using the interrelated development of these two cities as our guide, we will explore topics such as the various forms of government (tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy), individual and community, sexuality and gender roles, and the importance of culture to society. Visual evidence of the remains of ancient Athens will be used equally with the written evidence of Greek authors to reach a more complete picture of the ancient Greek world.



Course no. HIST 302
Title Let's Go to the Tape: Inside the Oval Office with JFK, LBJ, and RMN
Professor Mark Lytle
Schedule Wed 1:20 pm-3:20 pm Olin 304
Distrib. A/C
CRN 93183

Cross-listed: American Studies

During the 1960s, a preoccupation with a place in history combined with the possibility of political blackmail to cause three presidents to record private conversations within the oval office. Recent publication of edited transcripts (and even the availability of the tapes themselves) allow us to become "flies on the wall" during three critical periods of the 1960s: John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Lyndon Johnson and the early years of the Great Society and Vietnam, and Richard Nixon and Watergate. What do the tapes reveal to us that we did not know before? How reliable are these apparent raw materials of history? And how do the tapes shape our view of three of the most controversial presidents in American history?



Course no. HIST 306
Title Hidden Ideas: the Intellectual Traditions of Afro-American Women
Professor Tabetha Ewing
Schedule Tue 9:00 am-12:00 pm Hegeman 300
Distrib. B/C
CRN 93178

Cross-listed: AADS, Gender Studies, MES

Black women's thought has remained hidden from the mainstream history of ideas, willfully sequestered in diaries, private correspondence, and the minutes of semi-private organizations or carelessly excluded by formal institutions. There exists an intellectual tradition of Afro-American women that is as rich and divers as the experiences that helped to shape it. This seminar will focus on ideas about slavery, race, color, anger, class, work (especially domestic service), suffrage, resistance, gender and sexuality, marriage, motherhood, charity, religion and spirituality, Africa (imagined), and escape. In the first part of the course we will read essayists, such as Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and Patricia Hill Collins, who write about Black women and explicitly draw on pre-existing traditions. Their methodologies will help to guide through a sensitive and pointed exploration of the primary sources that will be the focus of the second part of the seminar. Students will work chronologically from the mid-19th century to mid-20th century, always across the discipline, using letters, fiction, institutional documents, music, art, and film to get at this subject, which by definition does not exist.



Course no. HIST 350
Title Twentieth-Century Russia: A Society in Turmoil
Professor Gennady Shkliarevsky
Schedule Tue 3:40 pm-5:40 pm Olin 306
Distrib. C/D
CRN 93184

Cross-listed: Russian and 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.