|
16408
|
HIST 1001
Revolution
|
Robert Culp
Gregory Moynahan
|
T 10:10 am-11:30 am
Th 10:10 am-11:30 am
|
PRE 110
OLIN 307/308
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: Asian Studies; Human
Rights What is revolution? Why
does it happen? Where and when have revolutions occurred, and to what effect?
This course addresses these questions by exploring a range of revolutions in
Europe and Asia during the past five
centuries. A primary focus of the course will center on analyzing and comparing
some of the most iconic and influential revolutions in world history: the
French Revolution of 1789, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and the Chinese
Communist Revolution of 1921-1949. In addition, we will analyze the causes and
impact of a range of other revolutionary moments, including the German Peasant
Revolt of 1525, the Taiping Rebellion, the Meiji Restoration, the 1905
Revolution in Russia, the 1911 Revolution in China, China's Cultural
Revolution, the protests by students and intellectuals that rocked continental
Europe in 1968, and the "velvet revolutions" and near revolutions
that transformed state socialism in 1989. As we compare revolutions over time,
we will try to discern links or lines of influence between revolutionary
movements. We will also explore how particular revolutionary movements
contributed to a shared repertoire of revolutionary thought and action. No
previous study of history is necessary for this course; first-year students are
welcome. Class size: 35
|
16407
|
HIST 138
The Mediterranean World
|
Tabetha Ewing
|
T Th 4:40 pm-6:00 pm
|
OLIN 101
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: Environmental & Urban Studies "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. Class size: 22
|
16351
|
HIST 144
The History of Experiment
|
Heidi Knoblauch
|
M
W 11:50 am-1:10 pm
|
RKC 115
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: Experimental Humanities; Science, Technology,
Society The
scientific method and the modern form of the scientific experiment are arguably
the most powerful innovations of the modern period. Although dating back in its
modern form to only the sixteenth century, the concept of the experiment as an
attempt to find underlying continuities in experience has numerous origins
stretching back to earliest recorded history. In this course, we will examine
how different experiments and artisanal practices have been used to interpret
the natural world, and how those interpretations are reflective of the time
periods and cultural contexts in which they were made. We will conduct our own
experiments in replicability, discuss performance and the public culture of
science, and explore the visual and material cultures of science. This course is required for those who wish to
concentrate in Experimental Humanities. Class size: 22
|
16404
|
HIST 185
The making of the Modern Middle East
|
Omar Cheta
|
T Th 11:50 am-1:10 pm
|
OLINLC 206
|
HIST
DIFF
|
Cross-listed: Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Midde Eastern
Studies This course is a general historical survey of the Middle East since the late 18th century. It covers the major
transformations that the region witnessed, especially, the disintegration of
the Ottoman Empire, European imperialism,
nationalism (including the Arab-Israeli conflict), political Islam and, most
recently, the Arab Spring. The course emphasizes the interaction between
society, culture and politics. Therefore, in addressing each of these broad
themes, it pays particular attention to their social and cultural aspects such
as, gender, labor, popular culture and forms of protest. The geographic focus
of the course is largely the Eastern Mediterranean (including Egypt and Turkey),
Iran
and, to a lesser extent, the Gulf. While emphasizing the history of the modern Middle East, the course is meant to help students acquire
critical tools necessary for the study of history more generally. For example,
students will be required to examine primary texts and to reflect on the uses
of history in contemporary contexts. Class size: 22
|
16445
|
HIST 2014
History of New York City
|
Cecile Kuznitz
|
M
W 3:10 pm-4:30 pm
|
HEG 204
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed:
American Studies, Environmental &
Urban Studies This course will survey the history of New York City from its
founding as a Dutch colony until the present post-industrial, post-9/11 era. We
will emphasize the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the city was
transformed by immigration and rose to prominence as a global economic and
cultural capital. We will pay particular attention to the development and use
of distinct types of urban space such as housing, parks, and skyscrapers. We
will also consider New York’s
evolving population, including divisions of ethnicity, race, and socioeconomic
class. One recurrent theme will be the
various, often controversial solutions proposed to the problems of a modern
metropolis, such as the need for infrastructure (water management,
transportation), social and political reform (Tammany Hall, Jacob Riis), and
urban planning (Robert Moses).
Class size: 22
|
16352
|
HIST 2039
THE FIRST POWER
COUPLE: Franklin
& Eleanor Roosevelt IN DEPRESSION, WAR AND PEACE
|
Cynthia Koch
|
T Th 11:50 am-1:10 pm
|
OLIN 204
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: American Studies; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Human
Rights This
course will examine the public policies, leadership strategies, and sometimes
contentious political partnership between Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. It
concludes with an examination of Eleanor Roosevelt’s role as a member of the
first U.S.
delegation to the United Nations, chair of the first Human Rights Commission
and the driving force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ER did not always agree with FDR’s pragmatic
political decisions. He relied on her for her network of connections in the
worlds of social reform, civil rights, journalism, and labor. Using the lens of
Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency and Eleanor Roosevelt’s commitment to public
service, students will study the Great Depression, New Deal, Second World War
and the beginnings of the United Nations. The course will require primary
source research at the FDR Presidential Library and an analysis and review of
the new permanent museum exhibition. Students are expected to conduct
independent research to complete a final project that may be an online
exhibition, another approved public history project, or a traditional term
paper.
Class size: 22
|
16356
|
HIST 2111
High Middle Ages
|
Alice Stroup
|
T Th 1:30 pm-2:50 pm
|
OLIN 203
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: Medieval Studies “High
Middle Ages” focuses on Europe and the Middle East (with glances to Asia and North Africa), from the first millennium through the
fourteenth-century Black Death. We
ask: How did towns change and a middle
class emerge in western Europe; how did capitalist cultures develop, then link
East and West; how did universities complement or challenge the status quo in
Europe; how did political patronage sustain ancient philosophy in the Muslim
world; how did power and religious ideology affect political spheres; how did
medieval climate, technology, and epidemic transform Asia, the Middle East, and
Europe? Our primary sources are
literary, political, and philosophical.
We examine: polemical writings
about power and justice; Muslim and Jewish philosopher-theologians, whose work
inspired their Christian counterparts; and the legend of The Cid, a complex
hero, reimagined during the 12th-century Iberian reconquista, in a Spanish
vernacular masterpiece of epic poetry. Class size: 22
|
16347
|
HIST 2113
THE WORLDMAKERS:
THE INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF US Foreign Policy since 1890
|
Richard Aldous
|
T Th 4:40 pm-6:00 pm
|
RKC 101
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: Global & International Studies; Political Studies “Sometimes
I’ve been charged with being an elitist,” diplomat George F. Kennan observed in
1945. “Of course I am. What do people expect? God forbid that we should be
without an elite. Is everything to be done by gray mediocrity?” This course
examines the foreign policy intellectual elite that Kennan both admired and
personified, including the likes of Alfred Mahan, Woodrow Wilson, Charles
Beard, Walter Lippmann, Paul Nitze, Henry Kissinger, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Francis
Fukuyama, Paul Wolfowitz, and Samantha Power. Each in varying ways shaped and
dominated the discourse and practice of U.S. foreign affairs, including
judgments about the usefulness of history itself as a tool for decision making.
In their debates and disagreements about America’s evolving role as the world's
No. 1 power, each thinker, in the words of historian David Milne, “consciously
engaged in a process of worldmaking," formulating strategies to deploy
vast military and economic power--or its retraction--to protect U.S. permanent
interests. At the heart of those debates
was the perennial question, first asked by Tom Paine in 1776: Does America have
it within its power “to begin the world over again"? Class size: 22
|
16353
|
HIST / JS 215
FROM SHTETL TO
SOCIALISM: East
European Jewry IN THE MODERN ERA
|
Cecile Kuznitz
|
M
W 11:50 am-1:10 pm
|
RKC 200
|
HIST
DIFF
|
Cross-listed: Global & International Studies; Historical
Studies; Jewish Studies; Russian Eastern Europe was the largest and
most vibrant center of Jewish life for almost five hundred years prior to the Holocaust. In that
period East European Jewry underwent a wrenching process of modernization,
creating radically new forms of community, culture, and political organization
that still shape Jewish life today in the United
States and Israel. We will consider topics
including the rise of Hasidism and Haskalah (Enlightenment), modern Jewish
political movements including Zionism, pogroms and Russian government policy
towards the Jews, and the development of modern Jewish literature in Yiddish
and Hebrew. Course materials will include primary and secondary historical
sources as well as literature. The course will also incorporate guest lectures
by faculty at Bard partners in Eastern and Central Europe. Class
size: 16
|
16358
|
PHIL / HIST 221
History and Philosophy of
Evolutionary Biology
|
Michelle Hoffman
|
T Th 1:30 pm-2:50 pm
|
OLIN 305
|
HIST
|
See Philosophy
section for description.
|
16350
|
HIST 222
A History of the Modern
Police
|
Tabetha Ewing
|
T Th 3:10 pm-4:30 pm
|
OLIN 305
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: American Studies; French Studies; Global &
International Studies; Human Rights (core course) (Part of the
Courage to Be series) This
course explores the invention and evolution of the police, including the
international police, as a modern institution from the late 17th century to the
present. It focuses largely on France,
Britain, and America.
However, students will be encouraged to think comparatively and globally. We
will consider the development of the police as an expression of sovereign right
and of citizens’ rights, from enforcer of the king’s will to public servant.
Changing ideas of security and order not only undergird the history of the
police but have developed through police practices. We will observe how resistance
to diverse forms of policing entered into civil and human rights discourses
almost from the start. The course is organized chronologically and around
public space: the market, food security, and price regulation; the port and
contraband; the urban street, vice, and violence; the road, highwaymen, and
runaway slaves; the public housing project and domestic violence; the
neighborhood and resistance to policing; and from the more abstract sites of
early international cooperation to state and international investigative
agencies, such as the FBI, MI 6, and Interpol. In these spaces, we study the
vulnerabilities of individual bodies and social groups, including those of the
police. We study vulnerabilities that resulted from the institutional growth of
the police, especially in its powers to identify, classify, and contain mobile
populations and commit acts of violence with legitimacy. Today, many police
departments include “courage” in their mission statements, accepting that the
job requires their members throw themselves bodily into high-risk situations.
Members of marked populations describe as “courageous” activities that unmarked
populations take as commonplace or as their right, from walking in a different
neighborhood to raising children. Beyond bold acts in the service of order or
outstanding acts of opposition, we will consider how the policed world incited
and incites everyday forms of courage, contributing to ideas of citizenship and
personhood. Class
size: 16
|
16410
|
HIST 2237
Radio Africa:
Broadcasting Hist
|
Drew Thompson
|
M
W 11:50 am-1:10 pm
|
OLIN 204
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: Africana Studies; Experimental Humanities; Global &
International Studies; Human Rights The
radio is a type of technological innovation that was party to Africa’s
colonization and decolonization. While colonial authorities used the radio to
broadcast news reports and to internally transmit governing strategies, local
African communities sometimes appropriated the radio for both political and
entertainment purposes. This course uses the technological history of the radio
in Africa to explore histories of political
activism, leisure, cultural production and entertainment across Sub-Saharan
Africa from colonial to present times. From a topical perspective, the course
will cover the development of radio stations and distribution markets, the
politics of programming and censorship, international development agencies’
push for community radio, and radio dramas. Using theoretical texts on sound,
affect and oral tradition, students will identify different cultures of
listening with the aim of unpacking what it means to use words and music in
order to “broadcast” history. As a final project and in conjunction with the
Human Rights Program’s Radio Initiative, students will design a podcast on a
topic of historical relevance to the course.
Class size: 22
|
16409
|
HIST 2241
Contemporary Russia
|
Sean McMeekin
|
M
W 11:50 am-1:10 pm
|
HEG 204
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: Global & International Studies; Political
Studies; Russian & Eurasian
Studies This course provides an introduction to contemporary Russia and the
CIS. After examining the dilemmas of
reform in the 1980s and the collapse of the Soviet Union, we will trace the
different paths of Russia
and the other successor states up to the present day. Key themes include the command economy and
efforts to liberalize it; the nature of the Soviet collapse and whether it was
“inevitable”; market reforms and “shock therapy”; the hyperinflation of the early
1990s and its consequences; the rise of the mafia; the war(s) in Chechnya; the
transition from Yeltsin to Putin, and the current scene. Class
size: 22
|
16357
|
HIST 2253
War Against the World
|
Alice Stroup
|
T Th 10:10 am-11:30 am
|
OLIN 203
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: Environmental & Urban Studies Ecological
history is a skeptical version of the triumphalist history of technology. For each celebrated achievement --
pastoralism, agriculture, steam power, and so on -- there has been a price to
pay. W. H. McNeill traces the toll of
agriculture, for example, on human health in a world where living things
compete for water. His son, J. R.
McNeill, examines how electricity and the combustion engine have contaminated
air, water, and earth. Numerous studies
correlate dams with reduced salmon spawning, reservoirs with more rapid
evaporation of water, and pesticides with extinctions and mutations. The list is long enough to warrant the
dissident new historiography we tamely call environmental history. We will supplement Joachim Radkau's
magisterial book, Nature and Power, with case studies from around the world. Class size: 22
|
16348
|
HIST 232
American Urban History
|
Myra Armstead
|
T Th 1:30 pm-2:50 pm
|
OLIN 202
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: American Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies The course
is a study of urbanization in the United States over time as a social
and cultural process best understood by relevant case studies. Topics are not limited
to, but will include urban spatial practices and conceptualizations, the
establishment of the nation’s 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 ideations/representations of
American cities. Class
size: 22
|
16246
|
HIST / THTR 236
POWER AND
PERFORMANCE IN THE COLONIAL ATLANTIC
|
Christian Crouch
Miriam Felton-Dansky
|
M W 11:50 am-1:10 pm
|
OLINLC 115
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: American
Studies; Experimental Humanities; Historical Studies Societies in different historical periods
have habitually used performance to stage, reinforce, and re-imagine the scope
of political and colonial power. The history of the theater, therefore, is
inextricably connected with the history of how societies have performed
conquest, colonialism, and cultural patrimony in different parts of the world.
This interdisciplinary course, covering performance and power of the early
modern period, will disrupt habitual assumptions about both the disciplines of
theater and history. Students will read baroque plays, study their historical
contexts, and experiment with staging scenes, to uncover the links between
imagined and actual Atlantic expansion and the impact of colonialism,
1492-1825. Artistic forms to be examined include the English court masque, the
Spanish auto sacramental, and spectacles of power and conversion staged in the
colonial Americas;
plays will range from Shakespeare's The
Tempest to Marivaux's The Island of
Slaves to allegorical works by Calderon, Lope de Vega, Sor
Juana Inés de la Cruz, and more. Class size: 30
|
16187
|
HIST 2361
Magic, Mysteries & Cult
|
Carolyn Dewald
|
T Th 1:30 pm-2:50 pm
|
OLIN 308
|
HIST
DIFF
|
Cross-listed: Classical Studies; Religion This course examines the ways
in which polytheism was practiced and conceptualized by the ancient Greeks from
the Mycenaean period into the Hellenistic era.
It will emphasize the ritual aspects of Greek polytheism through the
analysis of religious institutions, beliefs, and rites in their wider
socio-cultural contexts. We will explore
the literary expressions of Greek religion (the connection between myth and
religion, e.g.), and the ways in which Greek religious beliefs and practices
profoundly affected the development of Greek culture and history, in particular
in the classical city state of Athens, and also in the syncretistic Hellenistic
world that came afterwards. Class size:
18
|
16354
|
HIST 240
20th Century Diplomatic
History
|
Sean McMeekin
|
M
W 3:10 pm-4:30 pm
|
RKC 103
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: Global & International Studies; Political Studies This course
examines in depth the tumultuous history of the “short twentieth century.” While one cannot understand the period
without grappling with social movements and ideas, our emphasis will be
primarily on high politics, war and diplomacy from the outbreak of the First
World War in 1914 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, with a brief epilogue
on the post-Cold-War era. This course may also be taken for credit in REAS
program, so long as students write a paper on a topic in Russian/Eurasian
Studies. Class size: 22
|
16405
|
HIST 269
Encounters in the American
Borderlands
|
Christian Crouch
|
M
W 1:30 pm-2:50 pm
|
OLIN 204
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: Africana Studies; American
Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies; Human Rights Frontiers and borders have threaded
across the Americas
like a spiderweb from the late fifteenth century
until the present. What did it mean to
have an encounter in these borderlands – between Native Americans and Europeans
or Africans, or among the American-born descendents
of all these groups? Who are the actors
who chose to make their homes in these spaces?
Are borderlands exclusively a physical space or are they imagined as
well and how do they move and change
over time? This course provides an introductory
overview to borderlands in North America from
the Columbian Exchange (1492) to the late twentieth century, considering the
possibilities and perils for the men and women of diverse origin living in the
zone between empires and nations. Class
size: 22
|
16411
|
HIST / PS 283
Environmental Politics:East Asia
|
Robert Culp
|
T Th 11:50 am-1:10 pm
|
OLINLC 115
|
SSCI
|
Cross-listed: Asian Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies; Global &
International Studies; History This class explores the history and politics
of environmental change and efforts to manage it across East
Asia. China, Japan, and Korea have all undergone rapid
economic development in recent decades, leading to dramatic changes in the
livelihoods of their people. But rapid development also had steep environmental
costs. This class explores the similarities and differences in the ways that
each country has approached the environment, from historical themes in the
culture, society, and religion of each place, to more modern domestic and
international concerns over pollution, waste, energy and food security,
population growth, resource degradation, public health, and social justice. We
will explore both how the region's strong states have confronted environmental
crises and how social movements have created openings for environmental law and
policy along with a more vibrant civil society in all three countries, despite
post-World War II histories of an entrenched political class resisting popular
opposition. Class size: 22
|
16349
|
HIST 312
THE LIVES OF
OTHER SLAVES: Middle Eastern ExpERIENCES of Slavery
|
Omar Cheta
|
W 1:30 pm-3:50 pm
|
OLIN 305
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: Human Rights; Midde Eastern Studies In
the United States, "the
antebellum Cotton
Kingdom" shapes
understandings of slavery and its legacy. As powerful and widespread as these
experiences were, the global history of slavery is broader. The trans-Atlantic
slave trade was not alone in the early modern period. Millions of Africans were
enslaved and forced to covert to Islam in an eastern-oriented trade, alongside
Slavs and Caucasians. Their experiences ran the gamut of alienated labor up to
occupying the most prestigious positions within the imperial army and
administration of the Ottoman Empire, the
longest lasting Islamic empire in history (ca.1300-1922). Taking the
experiences of Ottoman slaves as a starting point, this seminar explores the
identities, trajectories and afterlives of slaves in the Middle East (very
broadly defined to include North Africa, the Balkans and the Caucasus)
during the early modern and modern periods. The seminar's main topics include:
the recruitment, training and careers of slaves; the everyday life of slaves;
the trade networks that enabled the displacement of slaves; the paradoxical
role of European colonialism in ending slavery; the memory of slavery and its
influence on postcolonial societies; and the reemergence of new forms of
slavery in today's Middle East. Class size: 15
|
16355
|
HIST 3134
The Arab Israel Conflict
|
Joel Perlmann
|
T 3:10 pm-5:30 pm
|
OLIN 303
|
HIST
DIFF
|
Cross-listed: Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Jewish
Studies; Midde Eastern Studies This course
provides an understanding of the conflict from its inception in the late 19th
century to the present. Themes include:
the development of the Jewish national movement to settle Palestine (Zionism)
and Palestinian Arab nationalism; the
1948 War, statehood and refugees; conflicts between national states (Israel vs.
Egypt, Syria, Jordan, etc); the 1967 War and Israel’s control thereafter of
conquered territories (through military occupation and civilian settlements);
the Palestinian resistance movements; later wars; the evolving relation between
Israel, the various Arab states, and the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas; the
special role of Gaza. Shifting
competitions of world and regional powers have been a factor at every turn
(Ottoman, British, American/Soviet, hegemonic American and Iranian). Finally, we will also assess the changing
nature of international opinion and support: Israel’s
image, the prospects of recent international (often non-governmental) movements
to influence Israeli policy, the evolving relationship between American Jews
and Israel
and alternative possible solutions to the conflict. After a very brief overall survey, the class
will consider a turning point or special theme each week. Students major writing assignment will be a
term paper.
Class size: 15
|
16446
|
HIST 314
Violent Cultures and
Material Pleasures in the atlantic world
|
Christian Crouch
|
T 10:10 am-12:30 pm
|
FISHER ANNEX
|
HIST
|
Cross-listed: Africana Studies; American Studies; Experimental Humanities;
French Studies; Human Rights; Latin American Studies Emeralds. Chocolate.
Sugar. Tobacco. Precious.
Exotic. Sweet. Addictive.
Like human actors, commodities have stories of their own. They shape human existence, create new sets
of interactions, cross time and space, and offer a unique and incredible lens
through which to view history. This
course explores the hidden life of material objects that circulated from the
early modern Atlantic into the rest of the
world. The life cycle of these products
and items reveal narratives of Atlantic violence imbedded into these products:
the claiming of Indian land, the theft of enslaved labor, the construction and
corruption of gender norms. Course
readings will introduce historical methods and strategies to reclaim history
from objects found in different parts of the Americas and will culminate with
students having the opportunity to do original research and write the narrative
of an item themselves. This course fulfills the American Studies Junior Seminar
requirement and History Major Conference requirement. Class
size: 12
CROSS-LISTED IN HISTORY:
|
16337
|
ANTH 212
Historical Archaeology
|
Christopher Lindner
|
T 4:40 pm-6:00 pm
F 11:50 am-4:30 pm
|
HEG 300
|
SSCI
DIFF
|
|
16246
|
THTR 236
Power/PerformANCE in the
Colonial Atlantic
|
Christian Crouch
Miriam Felton-Dansky
|
M
W 11:50 am-1:10 pm
|
OLINLC 115
|
HIST
|