19332

HIST 1001  Revolution

Robert Culp Gregory Moynahan

T  Th    10:10-11:30 am

OLINLC 115

HA

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: 44

 

19568

HIST 112   THREE CITIES: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE URBAN HISTORIES OF Lagos, Nairobi, & Johannesburg

Drew Thompson

M  W      1:30 pm – 2:50 pm

Barringer House 104

HA

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

 

19139

CLAS 115  Introduction: The Greek World

Robert Cioffi

M  W      11:50-1:10 pm

OLIN 202

HA

HIST

Cross-listed: Historical Studies  This course will explore the social, cultural, and political history of the Greek world from its earliest beginnings in the Bronze Age to the “renaissance” of Greek literature and culture under the Roman empire. We will examine the creation of political forms (from democracy to tyranny), contacts and conflicts between Greece and the East, the rise and fall of world empires, and the invention of literary genres from lyric poetry to the Greek novel. Ancient sources such as vase paintings, inscriptions, and texts like Aeschylus’ Persians and Aristophanes’ comedies will allow us to view the Greek world both from the top down and from the bottom up, asking how the experience of statesmen and literary authors as well as soldiers, merchants, women, and slaves shaped and was shaped by the world of Greece. Intended as an introductory course for both majors and non-majors, this course assumes no prior knowledge about the ancient world. All readings will be in English.  Class size: 22

 

19327

JS / HIST 120  Jewishness Beyond Religion

Cecile Kuznitz

T  Th    3:10-4:30 pm

OLIN 307

HA D+J

HIST DIFF

Cross-listed: Historical Studies  In the pre-modern world Jewish identity was centered on religion but expressed as well in how one made a living, what clothes one wore, and  what language one spoke. In modern times Jewish culture became more voluntary and more fractured. While some focused on Judaism as (only)  a religion, both the most radical and the most typical way in which  Jewishness was redefined was in secular terms. In this course we will explore the intellectual, social, and political movements that led to new secular definitions of Jewish culture and identity, focusing on examples from Western and Eastern Europe and the United States. Topics will include the origins of Jewish secularization, haskalah (Jewish enlightenment) and Reform, acculturation and assimilation, modern Jewish political movements including Zionism, and Jews and the arts.  In addition to secondary historical texts we will pay special attention to a wide variety of primary source documents. The class will also incorporate materials drawn from literature, film, and music. 

Class size: 18

 

19328

LAIS / HIST 120  Modern Latin America since Independence

Miles Rodriguez

T  Th    10:10-11:30 am

OLIN 203

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.  Class size: 22

 

19329

HIST 123  the Window at Montgomery Place

Myra Armstead

T           1:30-2:50 pm

OLIN 205

HA D+J

HIST DIFF

Cross-listed: American Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies; Experimental Humanities

2 credits  In 1802, when widow Janet Montgomery (1743-1824) acquired a 380-acre property on the Hudson River, she began the process  of converting the landscape  from a "wilderness"  into a "pleasure ground."   This transformation was a physical one, reflecting prevailing ideas about the ideal, aesthetic relationship between humans and "nature" as well as emerging notions regarding scientific agriculture. After her death, her successors continued this task.  Additionally, the creation and development of Montgomery Place mirrored contemporary social relations and cultural conventions, along with shifts in these realities at the national level. As it was populated by indentured servants, tenants, slaves, free workers, and elites, Montgomery Place will be approached as a historical laboratory for understanding social hierarchies, social roles, cultural practices, and the evolving visions of the nation and "place" that both sustained and challenged these things during the nineteenth century in the United States.  Class size: 22

 

19330

HIST 144  The History of Experiment

Gregory Moynahan

T  Th    1:30-2:50 pm

OLIN 204

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 inventions 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 look at several different epochs' definition of experiment, focusing on the classical, medieval, and finally renaissance eras to the present. Throughout, we will understand the concept of experiment as closely connected with an era's broader cosmology and definition of experience, and as such will see the epistemological problem of the experiment in a framework that includes aesthetics, theology, ethics and politics. We will also assume that "experiment" has taken different forms in the different sciences, and even in fields such as art and law. Class size: 22

 

19331

HIST 185  the  Making of the  Modern Middle East

Omar Cheta

T  Th    11:50-1:10 pm

OLIN 202

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 Middle East witnessed from the late 18^th century to the present. Topics include reform movements in the Ottoman Empire, European imperialism, nationalist movements (including the Arab-Israeli conflict), political Islam, military intervention, and the Arab Spring (and its aftermath). The course emphasizes the interaction between society, culture, and politics. Therefore, in addressing each of these broad themes, we will pay particular attention to their social and cultural aspects such as gender, labor, popular culture, and forms of protest. In addition to exploring modern Middle Eastern history, students will acquire critical thinking skills through examining primary documents and reflecting on the uses of history in contemporary contexts.

Class size: 22

 

19339

HIST 2014  History of New York City

Cecile Kuznitz

T  Th    1:30-2:50 pm

OLIN 202

HA

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

 

19334

HIST 203  Russia under the Romanovs

Sean McMeekin

T  Th    11:50-1:10 pm

RKC 102

HA

HIST

Cross-listed: Global & International Studies; Russian 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: 24

 

19335

HIST 213  Immigration in American Politics, past and present

Joel Perlmann

T  Th    11:50-1:10 pm

OLIN 205

HA D+J

HIST DIFF

Cross-listed: Africana Studies; American Studies; Human Rights; Sociology  Dreamers and DACA, illegal aliens, dangerous Muslims, fear for jobs, “populism” gone rampan.  During and since the 2016 presidential election, immigrants and immigration policy have played a central role in American political debate and the rise of Donald Trump. There are also plenty of apparent parallels in Europe. Some of these developments are surely novel and we will try to specify just what is novel in the American case. At the same time we will ask, what is not so new? After all, immigrant cultural differences, race, and jobs often have been familiar themes in American political history. Class readings will focus both on historical accounts of the immigrant in American politics – and in emerging understandings of the present instance. Class size: 22

 

19336

HIST 229  Confucianism: Humanity, Rites, and rights

Robert Culp

T  Th    11:50-1:10 pm

HEG 308

HA D+J

HIST DIFF

Cross-listed: Asian Studies;Global & International Studies;  Human Rights; Philosophy Confucianism is one of the most venerable, diverse, and dynamic intellectual and cultural traditions in human history. This course explores the transformations of Confucian philosophy, social ethics, and political thought, from its ancient origins through the present, focusing on five key moments of change. Close readings in seminal Confucian texts provide a foundation in the earliest Confucian ideas of benevolence, rites, and righteousness. We then delve into the ideas of China’s middle-period Neo-Confucian thinkers Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming, who pondered universal principle, the Great Ultimate, and innate human goodness. The third segment of the course analyzes the globalization of Confucian thought during the 16 th through the 19 th centuries, as Jesuit missionary translations of Confucian texts inspired the European Enlightenment and European imperialism sparked Chinese thinkers’ reformulation of “Confucianism” as a bounded, continuous tradition. The fourth segment of the course reconstructs how Confucian thought shaped Western ideas of rights as they entered East Asian politics and explores how Confucian concepts of humanity, relational ethics, and social responsibility may offer alternatives to Euro-American rights discourse. Finally, the course considers the contemporary Confucian revival as manifested in popular culture, tourism, neo-liberal economic discourse, and East Asian state authoritarianism. No prior study of Chinese language or history is required; first-year students are welcome.  Class size: 22

 

19333

HIST 231  the Political History of Common  Sense

Tabetha Ewing

T  Th    4:40-6:00 pm

OLIN 107

HA

HIST

Cross-listed: Africana Studies; American Studies; French Studies; Human Rights  This course seeks to broaden understandings of modern democracy by locating populism and its tensions with myriad forms of expertise, for example, orthodox religious authorities, Enlightenment thought, legal frameworks for citizenship, abolitionism, and state forms of information-gathering and knowledge production. Opposition to book learning, intellectualism, and expertise may only be as old as the wide-scale presence of books, intellectuals, and experts in social life. In other words, however seemingly universal and transhistorical folk knowledge, proverbial wisdom, and, especially, common sense are presented, their meaning, significance, and practice have changed over time. Their politicization in France, Great Britain, and the United States is, in fact, distinctly modern. Born not only of struggles between tradition and innovation, common sense emerged in the early-modern global contact between Africans, indigenous peoples, and Europeans, lettered and illiterate, articulating rights during the revolutionary formations of nation and empire. The course begins around the time of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and ends with the trickster politics of later 20th/21st-century Brazil, Ghana, and the United States. Prerequisites: AS 101, HIST 101, 102, PS 115 or equivalent. Class size: 18

 

9141

CLAS 232  Herodotus and Thucydides

James Romm

T  Th    1:30-2:50 pm

OLIN 303

HA

HIST

Cross-listed: Historical Studies  These two Greek prose writers are generally called historians, but the term only begins to describe them. Herodotus uses the chronicle of the Persian Wars to explore geography, anthropology, religion, and ethical philosophy; Thucydides weaves into his account of the Peloponnesian War debates on foreign policy, political science, justice, and morality. Both writers address themselves to timeless concerns of democracies and of hegemonic powers, hence of the modern-day US. This course will read both their works in entirety, with attention to the questions they raise in both ancient and modern contexts. The historical evolution of fifth-century Greece will form the backdrop to these questions and will be an essential component of the course.  Class size: 18

 

19337

HIST 232  American Urban History

Myra Armstead

T  Th    3:10-4:30 pm

OLIN 205

HA

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

 

19338

THTR / HIST 236  Power & Performance in the Colonial Atlantic

Christian Crouch Miriam Felton-Dansky

M  W      10:10-11:30 am

RKC 102

HA

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: 22

 

19344

HIST 301  The Second World War

Sean McMeekin

T  Th    3:10-4:30 pm

HEG 201

HA

HIST

Cross-listed: Global & International Studies; Political Studies  This course examines the Second World War in all its manifold dimensions, from causes to consequences, covering all major fronts.  The course satisfies the 300-level requirement for HS majors for either historiography or the research-focused major conference, but non-history majors are also welcome.  Students taking the course as a major conference are strongly encouraged to use the resources of the FDR Library in Hyde Park, which we will visit together. Class size: 15

 

19020

HIST 311  Orwell and His World

Richard Aldous

T           1:30-3:50 pm

HEG 200

HA

HIST

Since George Orwell’s death in 1950, Animal Farm and 1984  between them have sold more than forty million copies, and "Orwellian" has become, in the words of one linguist, “the most widely used adjective derived from the name of a modern writer … even nosing out the rival political reproach ‘Machiavellian,’ which had a 500-year head start.” This course looks at Orwell in the context of the tumultuous 1930s and 1940s, examining his take on British and international politics, culture and society through a close reading of his fiction, non-fiction, letters and diaries.  Class size: 15

 

19341

HIST 322  Captive Children and Empire

Christian Crouch

M           1:30-3:50 pm

RKC 200

HA D+J

HIST DIFF

Cross-listed: Africana Studies; American Studies; Experimental Humanities; Global & International Studies; Human Rights  Children in the era of increased global interaction since 1400 have experienced a unique role as cultural intermediaries, translators, sources of forced labor,  and as the human glue of diplomatic alliances. This class takes a close look at the contemporary reality and the afterlives of prominent captive children including Native American captive Powhatan Pocahontas, English settler-colonist Esther Wheelwright, and Ethiopia’s Prince Alamayu. Through archival detective work and a consideration of changing media representations, students will learn how to recover the lived experiences of children and teens who were ‘spirited away.’ The course will also consider how these histories shape current dialogues and representations of imperial encounter, colonial legacies, child rights, and family separation today. This seminar can be used to fulfill the American Studies Junior Seminar requirement and the Historical Studies Major Conference requirement. Class size: 15

 

19345

HIST 331  Latin America: Race, Religion, and Revolution

Miles Rodriguez

W         10:10-12:30 pm

OLIN 306

HA D+J

HIST DIFF

Cross-listed: American Studies; Human Rights; Latin American Studies This research seminar will study the violent interactions between race, religion, and revolution in Latin America from the early twentieth-century to the present, to understand how these interactions have mattered to the region’s history and how they explain some of its most violent current conflicts. The very name "Latin America" derived from and became associated with specific racial, religious, and revolutionary meanings through a history of violence. The seminar will begin by studying how racial concepts formed and became fixed ideas through distinct revolutionary-inspired intellectual debates on interracial mixture and indigenous rights. Based in Mexico and Peru, the formation of concepts like global mestizaje, a "cosmic race," and indigenismo involved rival valuations of each nation’s indigenous and colonial histories and cultures, with lasting effects. The seminar will then explore the simultaneous rise of wars and conflicts over radically different religious meanings and faiths, within and outside of Catholicism, including native religions and the rise of Evangelical Protestant Christianity. The latter part of the seminar will focus on Guatemala, which dramatically combined extreme violence over race, religion, and revolution, and focused global attention on indigenous rights and human rights. These histories will allow for a deeper understanding of the rise of different forms of violence in Central America today, and therefore of the current human rights, migrant, and refugee crisis centered there and involving other parts of Latin America and the US. This seminar emphasizes the narratives, interpretations, and voices of participants in the history, and critical engagement with these primary sources in the writing of the history.

Class size: 15

 

19343

HIST 334  Finnegans Wake: Vico, Joyce, and the new science

Gregory Moynahan

W         1:30-3:50 pm

OLIN 308

HA

HIST

Cross-listed: Experimental Humanities; Irish and Celtic Studies In 1725, Giambattista Vico presented to the world a "New Science" of poetic imagination that was intended as a point-by-point re-contextualization of the already established foundations of the natural sciences of Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon. In 1939, with much of the world enveloped in fascism and on the verge of a new technological war, James Joyce presented an immersive demonstration of Vico's science in Finnegans Wake. By turns confusing, hilarious, and profound, Joyce's "vicociclometer" sought to provide a reorientation in myth and history of the relation of ancient and modern life, religion, and politics. In this course, we will use the "exception" provided by both texts to look at the norms of modern intellectual history, using selections in their context to reconsider the background assumptions of modern societies and their political implications. Central issues will include the destruction of oral and traditional cultures (and peoples) by print based-civilizations, the function of science and myth in the organization of modern life (particularly as mediated by law), the definition of individuals and collectives by narrative and institutional form, the relation of written history to power, the function of technological media in politics, and the place of complexity in aesthetics and life. A central theme will be the history of the book as it develops among other media technologies, which we will thematize through the use of Bard's collection of the facsimiles of Joyce's voluminous notecards on Finnegans Wake (the so-called "Buffalo Manuscripts").

Class size: 15

 

19580

HIST / HR 335  SYRIA AND LEBANON: A SOCIAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY

Ziad Abu-Rish

T             4:40 pm - 7:00 pm

OLIN 309

HA D+J

HIST DIFF

Cross-listed: Human Rights; Middle Eastern Studies  This seminar explores the complex relationship between history, modernity, social relations, and cultural production in the territories that today form Syria and Lebanon. The course begins with the late Ottoman period (the 19^th century) and continues through the formation of the Syrian and Lebanese states, including the colonial, post-colonial, and contemporary periods. Of particular interest will be the changes and continuities in class composition, gender relations, sectarianism, and national identities. The focus will be on how social practices (e.g., urban planning, family organization, rural-urban migration, etc.) and cultural forms (e.g., novels, plays, songs, films, etc.) intersect with those changes and continuities. For example, how do transformations in the public sphere (e.g., the proliferation of newspapers, squares, and cafes) relate to the emergence of middle and working classes? Alternatively, how were new articulations of masculinities and femininities reflected in literary production, commercial advertisements, and/or school curricula? In what ways did realities of border demarcation and enforcement, along with the organization of representative institutions, challenge, create, or reinforce specific notions of self and community? Moreover, how did prolonged civil war in Lebanon or authoritarian rule in Syria shape the form and content of artistic practices produced in each of those two countries? The course will explore these and many other questions through a chronologically organized syllabus, adopting a comparative perspective that will consider developments in Syria and Lebanon in relation to one another, to the broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and to the world. Class size: 15

 

19342

HIST 345  Intermarriage and the mixing of peoples in American Society, past and present

Joel Perlmann

W         1:30-3:50 pm

OLIN 107

HA D+J

HIST DIFF

Cross-listed: Africana Studies; American Studies; Jewish Studies  ‘Intermarriage’ implies crossing a boundary, violating a prohibition (of law or custom) against certain kinds of marriage – for example, racial, ethnic or religious. These boundaries have been socially created, and as such have changed over time (both in rigidity and in terms of the groups involved). We will examine these three kinds of intermarriage in this course but focus especially on racial and ethnic mixing, past and present (including prospects for the future). Thus, part of our concern will be with the experiences of the couples who crossed the relevant boundaries and how contemporaries viewed them. However, as social observers have always stressed, some of the most intriguing implications of such unions do not concern merely the couples themselves but their descendants.  These descendants have had a great impact on group continuity or group melding (‘assimilation’) in America’s past and present. Indeed, viewed from the perspective of the country as a whole and across generations, American experiences of high and low levels of intermarriage have been related to respectively succeeding or failing to incorporate different peoples into the mainstream of its citizenry. The seminar deals not only with the social processes involved, but also with the intellectual understandings of those processes over time: how such intermarrying couples and and their descendants have been understood, and how has the American census in particular classified people of mixed origins?    Students’ major writing assignment will be a term paper, typically based partly on primary sources.  Class size: 12

 

 

 

Cross-listed courses

 

19298

ANTH 207  Cultural Politics of Empire: from the raj to humanitarian aid

Laura Kunreuther

M  W      1:30-2:50 pm

OLIN 203

SA D+J

SSCI DIFF

Cross-listed: Asian Studies; Historical Studies; Human Rights

 

19296

ANTH 212  early german and african americans near bard: Historical Archaeology

Christopher Lindner

Th       4:40-6:00 pm   F          1:30-5:00 pm

HEG 201 Field work

HA

SSCI DIFF

Cross-listed: Africana Studies; American Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies; Historical Studies

 

19139

CLAS 115  Introduction: The Greek World

Robert Cioffi

M  W      11:50-1:10 pm

OLIN 202

HA

HIST

Cross-listed: Historical Studies  Class size: 22

 

19141

CLAS 232  Herodotus and Thucydides

James Romm

T  Th    1:30-2:50 pm

OLIN 303

HA

HIST

Cross-listed: Historical Studies  Class size: 18