|
17436 |
HIST 117
Inclusion at Bard |
Myra
Armstead |
T 4:45
pm-6:05 pm |
OLIN 202 |
HA D+J |
HIST DIFF |
Cross-listed:
American Studies
2 credits The
nation's colleges and universities have clearly served as stepping stones,
remediating against racial inequalities by providing pathways toward upward
mobility for blacks and other minorities.
At the same time, historian Craig Wilder's EBONY AND IVY (2013), linking
elite American institutions to slavery, Brown University's disclosures of the
fortune made in the transAtlantic slave trade by its founders, and the recent
acknowledgement by Georgetown University of its sale of slaves to pay off
antebellum debts are just a few examples of the ways in which the role played
by institutions of higher learning in reproducing racial and other social
hierarchies in the United States has been proven. How have these contradictory dynamics
manifested themselves at Bard College?
In this Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences (ELAS) course, we will explore
this question by reviewing the College's evolving admissions policies toward
blacks and the experiences of alumni of color at the College, and after
graduation over time. Social profile,
oral history, and mapping methodologies will be utilized. While the focus will
be primarily on African Americans, we will also consider the history of similar
student populations at the College. Class
size: 22
|
17430 |
HIST / JS 115
Yiddish Language, LitERATURE & CulturE |
Cecile
Kuznitz |
T Th 3:10pm-4:30pm |
OLIN 309 |
HA D+J |
HIST DIFF |
Cross-listed:
Jewish
Studies; Russian & Eurasian Studies Yiddish
was primary language of European Jewry and its emigrant communities for
nearly one thousand years. This class will explore the role of Yiddish in
Jewish life and introduce students to Yiddish language, literature and culture.
Topics will
include the sociolinguistic basis of Jewish languages; medieval popular
literature for a primarily female audience; the role of Yiddish in the spread
of haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment); attempts to
formulate a secular Jewish identity around the Yiddish language; the
flourishing of modern Yiddish press, literature, and theater and their
intersection with European modernism; contemporary Hasidic (ultra-Orthodox)
culture; and the ongoing debate over the alleged death of Yiddish. All
assignments will be in English translation and will include Yiddish fiction,
poetry, theater, and film as well as primary and secondary historical sources. Class
size: 18
|
17431 |
LAIS / HIST 120 Modern Latin America since Independence |
Miles
Rodriguez |
T Th 10:10am-11:30am |
OLIN 101 |
HA D+J |
HIST DIFF |
Cross-listed: Historical Studies This is an introductory survey of the history of
Modern Latin America since Independence. The course traces the process of
Independence of the Latin American nations from the Spanish and Portuguese Empires
in North and South America in the early nineteenth century, and the long-term,
contested, and often violent processes of nation and state formation in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Focusing primarily on the two largest Latin
American countries, Brazil and Mexico, and a Caribbean island with an
inordinate historical influence in the region, Cuba, the class studies themes
like the results of empire, the survival of indigenous society, interracial
mixture, and the legacies of African slavery. The class also examines the main
historical issues and challenges of Latin America’s post-colonial independent
national period, including persistent inequality, regional integration and
disintegration, as well as revolution, military rule, and civil reconciliation.
This class will reflect comparatively in economic, social, political, and
cultural terms to understand the incredibly complex and diverse meanings and
histories of Latin America to the present. LAIS Core Course. Class
size: 22
|
17437 |
HIST 125
Pacific Worlds |
Holger
Droessler |
M W 1:30pm-2:50pm |
OLINLC 210 |
HA |
HIST |
Cross-listed: American Studies; Asian Studies; Global &
International Studies; Human Rights The Pacific Ocean covers a third of our earth’s
surface. Home to over a thousand languages and thousands of years of rich
histories, the Pacific has been and continues to be one of the most diverse
regions of cultural, social, economic, and environmental interaction. We begin
our seminar with the settlement of the Pacific Islands from Southeast Asia over
40,000 years ago and end with a critical analysis of debates about the
geostrategic and economic significance of the Pacific today. Topics to be
discussed include the environment, missionary and scientific explorations,
language diversity, identity-making, labor, gender, race, imperialism, and the
militarization of the Pacific. Class
size: 20
|
17435 |
HIST 132
The Mystery of History |
Richard
Aldous Mark
Lytle |
T Th 3:10pm-4:30pm |
HEG 102 |
HA |
HIST |
Cross-listed:
American Studies "Whodunnits" and police procedurals are
especially popular mystery genres. In the former the criminal has to be
discovered. In the latter we know who did it, but need to find the facts that
will lead to an arrest and conviction. Historians, too, often want to know
"who did it" or to find the evidence that allows them to make firm
judgments about the mysteries of our past. Were there really witches in Salem?
How did the revolutionary generation square their call for liberty and freedom
with their dependence on slavery? Was John Brown a martyr and hero, or simply
"unbalanced to the verge of outright madness"? Were Sacco and
Vanzetti robbers and murderers or the victims of a political prosecution? What
led four middle class black college students to the lunch counter at
Woolworth’s in Greensboro, NC in 1961 where they faced arrest and violence?
This course invites students to become detectives as they take a broad survey
of major issues in American history. What methods will lead to the evidence
they need to answer history’s major questions? In dramatic episodes that move
chronologically from the 16th to the 21st century, we follow "After the
Fact: The Art of Historical Detection" to examine a broad variety of
topics and sources. In this way we begin the detective work that historians use
when they are actually doing history. [This course fulfills the
historiographical requirement for history majors.] Class
size: 22
|
17432 |
HIST 139
City Cultures |
Myra
Armstead Cecile
Kuznitz |
T Th 1:30pm-2:50pm |
OLINLC 115 |
HA |
HIST |
Cross-listed: American Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies The built environment of
cities is a powerful indicator of the social and cultural history of urban
populations. In this course we will look
comparatively at five cities in the
|
17433 |
HIST 144
The History of Experiment |
Gregory
Moynahan |
T Th 1:30pm-2:50pm |
OLIN 301 |
HA |
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: 20
|
17642 |
HIST 154
West African History, 1000-1900 CE |
Ike
Achebe |
T Th 3:10pm
– 4:30pm |
OLIN 203 |
HA |
HIST |
Cross-listed: Africana Studies This course will provide an introductory survey on the
peoples and kingdoms of West Africa between 1000-1900 CE. The course will take
a long view of the origins, growth and expansion of the medieval kingdoms of
Ghana, Mali, and Songhai; and study the Hausa states, Yoruba chiefdoms, and the
republican communities and city-states of the Igbo people, among others. Topics
discussed will include
social and political organization of West African societies;
bureaucratic and government institutions, economy and trade, education and
scholarship; military organization and warfare of states in the region. Salient
features and transformations in traditional West African religion and modes of
worship will be studied both in relation to their internal dynamics, and in the
encounter of conflict and negotiation with Islam and Christianity. The extent
to which trans-Saharan and trans-Atlantic commercial networks served to
facilitate the exchange of economic, cultural and intellectual products and
services with North Africa, the Mediterranean, Europe and the New World will be
analyzed. The history of domestic slavery in West Africa and of the traffic of
West African captives in the Atlantic World will be examined in the context of
global developments. The character and progression of West African imperialism,
sometimes actuated by territorial annexation or control, and sometimes by the
propagation of Jihadist programs, will be studied side-by-side with the
aspirations of European imperialism in the region as a precursor to the
establishment of the Colonial State.
Class size: 22
|
17434 |
HIST 185
Making of Modern Middle East |
Ugur
Pece |
M W 11:50am-1:10pm |
HEG 102 |
HA D+J |
HIST DIFF |
Cross-listed:
Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Middle
Eastern Studies In this survey course, we will discuss major
transformations that the
Class
size: 22
|
17442 |
HIST 203
Russia under the Romanovs |
Sean
McMeekin |
M W 11:50am-1:10pm |
RKC 102 |
HA |
HIST |
Cross-listed:
Global & International Studies; Russian &
Eurasian Studies This
course is a survey of Russian history during the reign of the Romanov dynasty
from 1613 until the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917. Key themes will include military history and
imperial expansion, autocracy and its critics, Russia's allegedly
"belated" economic modernization, serfdom and land reform, and the
long-running argument over Russian identity between "westernizers"
and Slavophiles. Towards the end of the
term, we will investigate the origins and nature of Russian political radicalism,
in both populist and socialist strains.
Class
size: 22
|
17443 |
HIST 210
Crusading for Justice: On gender, sexuality, racial violence, media
& rights |
Tabetha
Ewing Truth
Hunter |
T Th 4:40pm-6:00pm |
OLINLC 118 |
HA |
HIST |
Cross-listed:
Africana Studies; American Studies; Gender and
Sexuality Studies; Human Rights (Courage To Be College Seminar) This course focuses on the activism of
journalist Ida B. Wells, daughter of two American slaves. Her campaign against
lynching in the late 19th- and early 20th-century continues to complicate
understandings of how and why black bodies are raced. She exposes lynching as
state-sanctioned, extra-legal violence against black men and women. She
challenges the legal double standards that erase the victimization of black
women and the sexual agency of white women. In doing so, she put her life and
livelihood on the line. In Wells’ work, we see the matrix of more than a
century of black feminist thought, critical race theory, and civil and human
rights activism. With articles on New Orleans and East Saint Louis that address
violence against the police as well as police use of excessive force, her work
speaks urgently of the contemporary American predicament to which the Black
Lives Matters movement responds. This course is part of the Courage To Be College Seminar Series; students are required to
attend three lectures in the in Courage to Be Lecture Series sponsored by the
Hannah Arendt Center. Open to Sophomores and Juniors. Class size: 15
|
17444 |
HIST 218
North America & Empire II |
Holger
Droessler |
M W 3:10pm-4:30pm |
OLIN 203 |
HA D+J |
HIST DIFF |
Cross-listed:
American Studies; Global & International Studies;
Human Rights This
course explores the rise of the United States from a hemispheric to a global
power over the course of the twentieth century. Two world wars, a global
depression, the Cold War, as well as a series of smaller but no less violent
conflicts dominated U.S. foreign relations during that time. The course
concludes with an outlook on America’s role in a world marked by the rising
influence of China and India as well as non-governmental actors. Throughout our
discussions, we will pay special attention to the ways in which everyday people
colluded and collided with U.S. imperialism. Class size: 22
|
17445 |
HIST 226
from missionaries to
marines: The US in the Middle East from the 19th
Century to the present |
Ugur
Pece |
M W 3:10pm-4:30pm |
ALBEE 106 |
HA |
HIST |
Cross-listed:
American Studies; Global & International Studies; Human
Rights; Middle Eastern Studies Popular perceptions of American involvement in the Middle
East coalesce around three issues: oil, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and
9/11. This course questions whether this articulation of the United States’
presence in the Middle East fully reflects American interests in the region. It
also explores how US policy has oscillated between disengagement and
intervention. Drawing on various sources such as government documents, consular
reports, and propaganda posters, we will critically engage with these questions
and unpack the features of US involvement in the Middle East from its
beginnings in the late Ottoman Empire to modern day Iraq and Afghanistan.
Alternative sources, such as popular slogans, songs, cartoons, and film, will
allow us to explore Middle Eastern responses (both positive and negative) to
American presence in the region. Topics include humanitarianism, imperialism,
popular protest, revolution, and the appeal of American popular culture.
Class
size: 22
|
17440 |
HIST 2301
China in the Eyes of the West |
Robert
Culp |
T Th 11:50am-1:10pm |
OLIN 204 |
HA D+J |
HIST DIFF |
Cross-listed: Asian Studies; Global & Int’l Studies;
Human Rights European Enlightenment
thinkers viewed the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) as the world's most enlightened
despotism, but by the turn of the twentieth century most Western thinkers
considered China to be the "sick man of Asia." This course will
reconstruct the visions of
|
17441 |
HIST 2481
Mao's China & Beyond |
Robert
Culp |
T Th 10:10am-11:30am |
OLIN 204 |
HA |
HIST |
Cross-list: Asian Studies, Global &Int’l Studies, Political Studies No individual
shaped modern China, and arguably any one human society, more than Mao Zedong.
This course uses Mao’s life and writings as a framework and material for
exploring twentieth-century Chinese history. We will focus first on the course
of China’s twentieth-century revolutions, and relate those movements to other
social, cultural, and economic trends, including urbanization,
industrialization, the urban-rural gap, consumerism, various intellectual and
cultural movements, and the expansion of the mass media. For the Maoist period
(1949-1978) we will address topics related to youth culture, socialist
citizenship, and political violence, using sources like memoirs and party
propaganda to explore the dynamics of Chinese state socialism and the Cultural
Revolution decade (1966-1976). The final third of the course will focus on
contemporary China in light of the history of the period of Reform and Opening
(1978-present), since Mao’s death. Fiction, film, television, advertisements,
and other mass media will help us understand how contemporary China has
developed in reaction to the Maoism of the previous decades. No prior study of
China is necessary; first year students are welcome. Class size: 22
|
17446 |
HIST 310
Captivity and Law |
Tabetha
Ewing |
W 1:30pm-3:50pm |
HEG 200 |
HA |
HIST |
Cross-listed: Africana Studies; Human Rights This course focuses on the
confrontation of early-modern African and European political thought and
practices of captivity, especially, abduction, wartime hostage-taking, slavery,
and other forms of internment. Captivity in the early modern world engages
questions of war and ransom as much as labor, religion, and race. It involves
contracts, written or not, for renting, selling, buying, and freeing people. As
such, captivity figures prominently in the so-called laws of war and peace. The
language of the law, here, indicates varying degrees of legitimacy and becomes
a touchstone for the changing morality of societies--with profound consequences
for understandings of gender and power. Students will write an Africa-centered
paper based on primary research.
This
course will serve as a Major Conference in historical research. Class
size: 15
|
17448 |
HIST 320
Latin America: Revolution Repression, and trauma |
Miles
Rodriguez |
W 10:10am-12:30pm |
OLIN 308 |
HA D+J |
HIST DIFF |
Cross-listed:
Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Latin
American & Iberian Studies In the last one hundred years, Latin America has been a
place of extremely contentious, violent, and unresolved conflicts. Although the
region is often considered a land of revolution, very few revolutions actually
took place there in the twentieth century. Revolution and its possibility
however had many unintended and traumatic consequences, including the rise of
military regimes, state terrorism, and civil wars, with their attendant human
rights abuses. This seminar begins with a study of the two major revolutions in
the first half of the twentieth century, in Mexico and Cuba. It then focuses on
the repressive reaction to the possibility or imagination of revolution
elsewhere in the region, in much of Central and South America, in the latter
part of the century. By studying twentieth-century Latin America from the
perspective of both revolution and repression, the seminar allows for a more
complete understanding of the region’s recent human rights crisis and its
legacy of trauma, both of which matter greatly to the region today. Class
size: 15
|
17447 |
HIST 324
topics in American Immigration history and policy |
Joel
Perlmann |
W 3:10pm-5:30pm |
OLIN 309 |
HA D+J |
HIST DIFF |
The major writing assignment in this course is an extended
research paper on a topic of the student’s choice, usually based heavily on
documents from the relevant period. Class readings will consist of both primary
source documents as well as the work of historians and social scientists. This
course will touch on the entire range of American immigration history but it
focuses on the period since 1870. Among the major topics to be considered this
semester are 1) The great policy debates over
restricting immigration. After decades of national debate, Congress finally
ended mass immigration altogether in 1924; but another four decades of national
debate led Congress to sweep away the 1924 law, leading to a new mass
immigration, this time from the countries of Asia and Latin America. What generated these massive shifts in
American thinking, ideals and resultant demographics? What role did international as well as
U.S. political dynamics play in each of these shifts? 2) Mexican immigration to the US has been
distinctive in several ways. It has
continued over a very long period (well over a century); in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries Mexicans came to have a unique place in the racial
hierarchy of the Southwest; in recent decades, the sheer scale of the Mexican
immigration and the presence of so many undocumented people in it have also
been unique. How have all these features affected these immigrants and the
larger society? Enrollment Limited to 12. This course
fulfills the History Program requirement for a Major Conference. Class size: 12
|
17449 |
HIST 330
spectacular history: From Minstrelsy to Reality TV |
Holger
Droessler |
T 1:30pm-3:50pm |
OLIN 107 |
HA |
HIST |
Cross-listed: American Studies Spectacular history traces the ups and downs of
the spectacle—as term, event, and structure of feeling—in American culture from
the end of the Civil War to the present. What caught the eyes of Americans over
this century and half has a lot to tell us about popular culture, performance,
and the media, but also about economics, race, and violence. This course
explores the spectacular history of the United States through a series of case
studies, from minstrelsy in the nineteenth century, ethnographic shows at the
turn of the twentieth century, to Hollywood, televised warfare, and YouTube.
Students will encounter the American spectacular in a variety of forms and places,
including show stages, court rooms, postcards, novels, advertisement,
television, and videos. This course fulfills the requirement for a historical
research seminar. Class
size: 15
|
17450 |
HIST 332
Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire |
Sean
McMeekin |
M W 3:10pm-4:30pm |
HEG 201 |
HA |
HIST |
Cross-listed:
Global & International Studies; Medieval Studies;
Russian & Eurasian Studies This course surveys
the history of the eastern Roman empire, with an emphasis on politics, war, and
strategy. Taking as our foil Edward Gibbon's classic history of the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire, we will investigate the hidden strengths of Byzantium
-- especially the underrated arts of diplomacy, deterrence, and strategic
flexibility -- which allowed an allegedly "decadent" empire to
survive for so long. This course
fulfills the history program's requirement for historiography. Class size: 15
|
17451 |
HIST 336
Islamic Empires: the ottomans, safavids, and mughals (1500-1850) |
Ugur
Pece |
T 4:40pm-7:00pm |
OLIN 309 |
HA |
HIST |
Cross-listed: Middle Eastern Studies
Covering an area
stretching from the Balkans to the Middle East, Iran, and India, this seminar
explores the history of three empires of Islam during the early modern period.
Topics include the varieties of Islamic rule; relations between diverse
populations (Muslims, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Hindus) as well as
urban, rural, and nomadic communities; incorporation of the Islamic world into
the global world economy; and trans-imperial networks of commerce and
knowledge. By examining the notion of empire (Islamic and otherwise) this
seminar fulfills the requirement for a historiography focused course. Class size: 15
Cross-listed courses:
|
17402 |
ANTH 212
Historical Archaeology |
Christopher
Lindner |
T 4:40pm-6:00pm F 11:50am-4:30pm |
HEG 300 |
HA |
SSCI DIFF |
Cross-listed: Africana Studies; American Studies; Environmental
& Urban Studies; Historical Studies Class size: 12
|
17036 |
CLAS 122
The Roman World: An Intro. |
Lauren
Curtis |
T Th 1:30pm-2:50pm |
OLIN 201 |
HA |
HIST |
Cross-listed: Historical Studies Class size: 22
|
17417 |
ECON 216
European Economic History |
Olivier
Giovannoni |
T Th 10:10am-11:30am |
OLIN 203 |
SA |
HIST |
Cross-listed: Global & International Studies; Historical Studies
Class size: 22
|
17526 |
SOC 245
Inter-Racial, inter-Ethnic Unions |
Joel
Perlmann |
T Th 4:40pm-6:00pm |
OLIN 204 |
SA D+J |
SSCI DIFF |
Cross-listed: Historical Studies; Jewish Studies Class size: 22