Course:

JS/HIST 120  Jewishness Beyond Religion: Defining Secular Jewish Culture

Professor:

Cecile Kuznitz  

CRN:

90145

Schedule:

 Mon  Wed    3:50 PM - 5:10 PM Olin 101

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap

22

Credits:

4

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 in the modern period. We will focus on examples drawn from Western and Eastern Europe but will also look at American and Israeli societies. Topics will include the Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment), acculturation and assimilation, modern Jewish politics including Zionism, and Jewish literature in Hebrew, Yiddish, and European languages.

 

Course:

HIST 122  Twentieth Century Britain

Professor:

Richard Aldous  

CRN:

90146

Schedule:

  Wed  Fri   2:00 PM - 3:20 PM Reem Kayden Center 101

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

Class cap:

20

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Global & International Studies

This introductory course offers a survey of Britain in the twentieth century. We start at the end of Queen Victoria's reign, when Britain was the most powerful country in the world, and move chronologically through the century. Particular emphasis is given to the multi-layered British experience of global conflicts (two world wars and the cold war), the relationships with Empire, Europe and the United States, as well as the creation of the welfare state, a diverse multicultural society and the eccentricities of a country where, to quote George Orwell, "a nice cup of tea is one of the mainstays of civilization."

 

Course:

HIST 129  Urban American History

Professor:

Jeannette Estruth  

CRN:

90147

Schedule:

 Tue  Thurs    5:40 PM - 7:00 PM Olin 201

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  American Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies

This class will explore the history of the urban American experience. We will ask: what makes a city? How have people built cities, inhabited them, and lived urban lives? What drives urban development and growth? What is the role of cities within capitalism and within government? Together we will begin to think of cities as sets of relationships, as well as a distinct spatial form. To that end, this course will use cities as a lens to research the following themes in United States history: labor and markets, wealth and inequality, ethnic identity and race, and gender and the environment since industrialization. With these frames of analysis, we will examine what ideas activists, architects, planners, social scientists, literary scholars, critical theorists, and sociologists have generated about urban America.  Our tools of exploration will include lectures, discussions, scholarly books, primary sources, articles, blogs, and films. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

 

Course:

HIST 134  The Ottomans and the Last Islamic Empire

Professor:

Omar Cheta  

CRN:

90148

Schedule:

Mon  Wed     10:20 AM - 11:40 AM Henderson Comp. Center 106

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Middle Eastern Studies

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

 

Course:

HIST 160  Latin-American Histories

Professor:

Miles Rodriguez  

CRN:

90149

Schedule:

 Tue  Thurs    12:10 PM - 1:30 PM Olin 301

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  American Studies; Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Latin American/Iberian Studies

There are now nearly sixty million people of Latin American origin or descent in the United States. Yet there is no agreement by members of this population, nor otherwise, on how to define, speak of, or understand them, in terms of either common or diverse experiences or histories. The very names people have used to describe them, and how they have described themselves, alternate, fluctuate, and vary tremendously by person, place, time, and circumstance. Those names include, but are not limited to: Hispanic, Latin, Latina, Latino, Latinx, and Latin-American, as well as for more specific groups, including: Afro-Latino, Chicano, Cuban, Dominican, Guatemalan, Honduran, Mexican, Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Xicano, and people of Indigenous and Latin American descent in the US. This class deals with the ways in which those of Latin American origin can be understood in terms of culture, race, ethnicity, nationality, and identity, and the attendant controversies inside and outside of their communities. It focuses on the distinct, and distinctive, qualities and histories of various parts of this population, including by far the largest group, people of Mexican descent, as well as the next largest, of Spanish Caribbean and Central American descent. Topics for special consideration include: ways to name, describe, and conceptualize people of Latin American origin and descent in the US; relations between different homelands and diasporas in Latin America and the US; race, racism, and mestizaje, or interracial mixture, as process and ideology; popular social movements; civil rights; women's rights; labor; migration; and relations with other Americans of different, as well as the same or similar origins. Its goal is to create a more complex and complete historical understanding of people of Latin American descent in the US today. LAIS Core Course. Historiography course. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

 

Course:

HIST 180  Technology, Labor, Capitalism

Professor:

Jeannette Estruth  

CRN:

90150

Schedule:

 Tue  Thurs    7:30 PM - 8:50 PM Olin 201

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  American Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies; Experimental Humanities; Human Rights; Science, Technology, Society

Artificial intelligence and the knowledge economy. Computation and Credit. Satellites and social media. Philanthropy and factory flight. "Doing what you love" and digital activism. Climate change and corporate consolidation. This class will explore changes in capitalism, technology, and labor in the twentieth- and twenty-first century United States. We will learn how ideas about work and technology have evolved over time, and how these dynamic ideas and evolving tools have shaped the present day.

 

Course:

HIST 186  India before Western Imperialism: 1200 to 1750 CE

Professor:

Rupali Warke

CRN:

90444

Schedule:

Mon  Wed     5:40 PM - 7:00 PM Olin 204

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Asian Studies

This entry-level course perceives India from a global perspective. It surveys the history of South Asia from 1200 to 1750 CE, the period during which most of the region came under the rule of Central Asian Muslim warriors and aristocrats. In this class, we will look at various textual and audio-visual sources to understand how the multiregional cultural identities crystallized under different political dynasties through the patronage of arts, architecture, religion, and cultural exchange due to trade. We will explore how the confluence of Indic and Perso-Arabic traditions was reflected in the languages, visual art, buildings, ideas of kingship, and religion. Students will read leading secondary works in conjunction with primary sources such as memoirs, travel accounts, and chronicles.

 

Course:

HIST 192  The Age of Extremes: Topics in European History

Professor:

Gregory Moynahan  

CRN:

90151

Schedule:

 Tue  Thurs    10:20 AM - 11:40 AM Olin 201

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  German Studies; Global & International Studies

This course will present a thematic survey of European history in the modern period.  Each week we will illuminate pivotal transformations in the era using different methodologies and forms of history, ranging from demographic and gender history to diplomatic and military history.  The class will thus offer an in-depth presentation of key aspects of modernity and a survey of contemporary historiography. Issues discussed will include: the relation of the agricultural and industrial revolutions to long-term ecological and demographic change; the intensification of capitalism as the basis of social organization; the coextensive development of competing ideologies of conservatism, anarchism, socialism, communism and liberalism; the role of Europe in the global economic system, "scientific racism," and neo-colonialism; the creation of new institutions of technological research, patent, and communication; the wars of the twentieth century, systematic genocide, and the development of a military-industrial technocracy; the transformation of the state system through the European Union; and the effect of mass media on definitions of the public sphere and political action.  A rudimentary grasp of modern European history is assumed, but supplemental reading will provide a broad narrative base for students with no background in the field.  This course satisfies the Historical Studies Program's historiography requirement.

 

Course:

HIST 195  Living Black in America:  Major Themes in African American History

Professor:

Myra Armstead  

CRN:

90144

Schedule:

Mon  Wed     10:20 AM - 11:40 AM Olin 201

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Africana Studies; American Studies

This course is intended to provide a foundation for understanding the African American experience in the past, and contemporary resonances of that past.  Rather than a strictly chronological overview, this survey is thematically organized.  Each theme will be approached  within a periodization that moves forward through the preindustrial, industrial, and postindustrial eras—thus highlighting the way in which the race/class nexus will be a central concern.   Major themes will be: the economics or wages of Blackness, social and cultural constructions of race, violence/surveillance/criminalization, self-constructed identities (racial, national, ethnic, gender), representations of Blackness (in art and literature),Black cosmologies/philosophies/resistance strategies and politics, and memory.  As students of history, we will consider continuities and discontinuities, connections and rupture—when, how, and why these occur.  While the themes can be viewed as discreet subjects, the ways in which they overlap and intersect will be addressed in the course as well. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

 

Course:

HIST 203  Russia under the Romanovs

Professor:

Sean McMeekin  

CRN:

90153

Schedule:

 Tue  Thurs    12:10 PM - 1:30 PM Reem Kayden Center 102

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

Class cap:

20

Credits:

4

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.

 

Course:

HIST 2128  Domesticity and Capital: gender, households, and women's wealth in South Asia

Professor:

Rupali Warke

CRN:

90443

Schedule:

Mon  Wed     3:50 PM - 5:10 PM Hegeman 201

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Asian Studies; Gender and Sexuality Studies

This course explores "˜capital' beyond the conventional materialist understanding of the term. Historically, women in South Asia have played an active role in politics and business enterprises and possessed personal wealth. This course historicizes households and domesticity, focusing on marriage, kinship, intimacy, and domestic slavery, to explore how these aspects shaped gender relations and wealth creation in South Asian history. We will discuss their impact on women's entrepreneurship, political networks, property rights, and inheritance. Students will engage with works of prominent scholars, theories of capital and kinship along with primary sources such as archival documents, religious texts, and chronicles.

 

Course:

HIST 2143  China's Last Emperors: Late Imperial Chinese History

Professor:

Robert Culp  

CRN:

90152

Schedule:

Mon  Wed     8:30 AM - 9:50 AM Olin 201

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Asian Studies; Global & International Studies

Modern China is in many ways the product of its imperial past. The dynamic commercial economy, vibrant cities, rich intellectual culture, expansive territory, and rapidly growing population of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynastic periods have provided resources that continue to shape Chinese life today. At the same time, the collapse of the imperial state caused by internal rebellion and foreign imperialism in the 19th century sparked a crisis that generated China's modern revolutions in the 20th century. This course explores the complex dynamics and legacies of Ming and Qing China, with special attention to state formation, domestic and international commerce, urbanization, consumerism, print culture, intellectual trends of idealism, empiricism, and statecraft, colonial expansion, ethnic politics, imperial autocracy, ritualization, rebellion, and reconstruction. The course culminates in an exploration of why the fall of the Qing dynasty meant the end of empire and how post-war reconstruction led to radical revolution. No prior study of China is required; first-year students are welcome.

 

Course:

HIST 219  The Past and Present of Capitalism in the Middle East

Professor:

Omar Cheta  

CRN:

90154

Schedule:

Mon  Wed     2:00 PM - 3:20 PM Olin 305

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Global & International Studies; Middle Eastern Studies

Capitalism is not only a Western economic system. It is a more comprehensive mode of organizing society that is being continuously adopted, modified and subverted around the globe. In this course, we will explore the multiple, and often counter-intuitive ways, in which capitalism became entrenched in the modern Middle East. Drawing on social, intellectual, environmental and business histories, we will examine how the encounter with modern capitalism shaped such pervasive political phenomena as European imperialism, post-colonial nationalism, and contemporary sectarianism. Additionally, we will dissect common modern practices, like smuggling and consumerism, to uncover how they came to define the culture of capitalism in Middle East over the past two centuries. Finally, we will consider the paradoxical place of the Middle East within the current global (capitalist) order, being at once a major exporter of oil and financial capital that power the world's most advanced economies, and a major exporter of economic migrants and refugees.

 

Course:

HIST 2210  Africans, Empire, and the Great War

Professor:

Wendy Urban-Mead  

CRN:

90167

Schedule:

 Tue      5:40 PM - 8:00 PM Olin 202

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

8

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Africana Studies

What made the First World War a "world" war? Many factors contributed to the conflict's designation as a world war, but the significant role of Africa, Africans, and members of the African Diaspora in the war is not least among them. Some Africans and members of the African diaspora signed up in response to a call for volunteers, others were ruthlessly coerced, and many more became involved for reasons that fell somewhere in the uncertain middle ground between coercion and willing participation. African-Americans, and African subjects under French, German, and British colonial rule in Africa and the Caribbean were drawn into the war's vortex. Following DuBois' prescient observation that "[t]he problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line," this course visits the Great War with an eye to unpacking the experiences, choices, and impacts of Africans and members of the African diaspora in the context of both empire and white supremacy. Gender - in conversation with questions regarding masculinity, warfare, and race - will be a vital course theme. Working from a wide range of primary materials and selected theoretical and secondary works, students will have the opportunity both to form questions in response to what they find in the readings, and explore possible answers, using the skills of the historian. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

This course is cross-listed with the MAT program.

.

Course:

HIST 225  Migrants and Refugees in the Americas

Professor:

Miles Rodriguez  

CRN:

90155

Schedule:

 Tue  Thurs    10:20 AM - 11:40 AM Olin 301

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  American Studies; Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Latin American/Iberian Studies

Cross-listed: American Studies; Human Rights; Latin American Studies.

The Border. The Ban. The Wall. Raids. Deportations. Separation of Families. Immigrant Rights. Sanctuary. Refugee Resettlement. These words - usually confined to policy, enforcement, and activism related to migrants and refugees - have recently exploded into the public view and entered into constant use. The current political administration made migratory and refugee enforcement, and of migration more generally, a centerpiece of its electoral campaign and the subject of its first executive orders, generating broad public controversy. Most migration to the US is from Latin America, by far the largest single migrant population is from Mexico, and the rise of Central American migration has proved enduring. Focusing on south-north migration from these Latin American regions, this class argues that it is impossible to understand the current political situation in the US without studying the relatively lesser-known history of migrant and refugee human rights over the last three decades, including massive protests, movements for sanctuary, and attempts at reform and enforcement. The class takes into account shifting global demographics, changing reasons for migration, rapid legal and political changes, complex enforcement  policies and practices, and powerful community movements for reform, which are often forgotten  with the opening and closing of a given news cycle. The class also argues that migrant and refugee voices matter and are critical to understanding migration as an historical and current problem. The course includes migrant, refugee, and activist narratives, and an array of historical, legal, political, and other primary sources. Its goal is to create a more complete historical understanding of Latin American-origin migration in the contemporary US context. This course is part of the Liberal Arts Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement and Education initiative. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

 

Course:

HIST 2311  London Calling: 80s Britain

Professor:

Richard Aldous  

CRN:

90158

Schedule:

  Wed  Fri   3:50 PM - 5:10 PM Reem Kayden Center 101

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

Class cap:

20

Credits:

4

Asked what she had changed in Britain in the 1980s, the prime minister Margaret Thatcher declared, "Everything!" This 200-level course examines a transformational and highly contested period in politics, culture and society through documents from the UK National Archives and the Thatcher Archive, plus seminal contemporary texts that illustrate and exemplify a decade of upheaval. From the conservative revolution and inner-city riots to Princess Diana, "Chariots of Fire," multiculturalism and post-punk, this is a time one historian calls "the revolutionary decade of the twentieth century."

 

Course:

HIST 2701  The Holocaust, 1933-1945

Professor:

Cecile Kuznitz  

CRN:

90159

Schedule:

 Mon  Wed     2:00 PM - 3:20 PM  Campus Center Weis Cinema

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  German  Studies; Human Rights; Jewish Studies; Russian Studies

This course will provide an overview of the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish people during the Second World War. We will begin by discussing some theoretical questions around the study of hate (specifically the hatred of Jews termed "antisemitism") and genocide. We will then proceed chronologically, examining the rise of the Nazis to power; the institution of ghettos and the cultural, social, and political activities of their populations; the turn to mass murder and its implementation in the extermination camps; Nazi persecution of other groups including the disabled and Roma and Sinti, and death marches and the liberation. In the latter part of the course we will focus on three of the most important historiographical debates in the study of the Holocaust, those surrounding the behavior and motives of "victims" (the nature of Jewish resistance), "perpetrators" (the Germans as "ordinary men" or "willing executioners") and "bystanders" (the reactions of Polish "neighbors," the Allies, etc.). As a course focusing on the persecution of a group defined as a racial minority, it fulfills the college's Difference and Justice requirement.

 

Course:

HIST 301  The Second World War

Professor:

Sean McMeekin  

CRN:

90160

Schedule:

Tue   Thurs     3:50 PM - 5:10 PM Hegeman 106

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

Class cap:

11

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Global & International 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.

 

Course:

HIST 3103  Political Ritual in the Modern World

Professor:

Robert Culp  

CRN:

90162

Schedule:

   Thurs    10:20 AM - 12:40 PM Olin 303

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Anthropology; Asian Studies; Experimental Humanities; Global & International Studies; Human Rights

Bastille Day, the US presidential inaugural, Japan's celebration of victory in the Russo-Japanese War, pageants reenacting the Bolshevik Revolution, and rallies at Nuremberg and at Tian'anmen Square. In all these forms and many others, political ritual has been central to nation-building, colonialism, and political movements over the last three centuries. This course uses a global, comparative perspective to analyze the modern history of political ritual. We will explore the emergence of new forms of political ritual with the rise of the nation-state in the nineteenth century and track global transformations in the performance of politics as colonialism spread the symbols and pageantry of the nation-state. Central topics will include state ritual and the performance of power, the relationship between ritual and citizenship in the modern nation-state, the ritualization of politics in social and political movements, and the role of mass spectacle in the construction of both fascism and state socialism. Seminar meetings will focus on discussion of secondary and primary materials that allow us to analyze the intersection of ritual and politics in a variety of contexts. These will range from early-modern Europe, pre-colonial Bali, and late imperial China to revolutionary France, 19th century America, colonial India, semi-colonial China, nationalist Japan, fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, the USSR, Europe in 1968, and contemporary Syria. In addition to common readings and seminar participation, students will write a final seminar paper exploring one aspect or instance of political ritual. Moderated history students can use this course for a major conference. 

 

Course:

HIST 3138  How to Read and Write the History of the (Post-)Colonial World

Professor:

Omar Cheta  

CRN:

90163

Schedule:

 Tue      10:20 AM - 12:40 PM Olin 303

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Global & International Studies; Middle Eastern Studies

In this seminar, we will study the most prominent approaches to writing the history of the colonial and post-colonial worlds, especially the Middle East and South Asia. Our primary goal will be to think about historical narratives of the (post-) colonial worlds as constructed artifacts and as products of certain intellectual environments. For each meeting, we will explore an influential school of historical writing, such as the French Annales or Italian Microhistory. Alongside these explorations, we will study examples of the scholarship on (post-) colonial history that engage with these historiographical traditions. Our discussions will revolve around the possibilities and limits of writing history in light of the existent historical sources, academic and disciplinary norms, other disciplinary influences (especially from literature and anthropology), as well as present political considerations.

 

Course:

HIST 3230  Infrastructure History

Professor:

Gregory Moynahan  

CRN:

90164

Schedule:

 Tue      2:00 PM - 4:20 PM Olin 301

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Experimental Humanities; Science, Technology, Society

This research course will use the history of infrastructures -- such as those of communication / information, transportation, energy, and military organization - to introduce pivotal themes in the contemporary history of science and technology, economics, and social-institutional history.  Infrastructure will be defined broadly to include both the explicit set of practices, systems, and technologies that provide the conditions for the possibility of modern social life and the implicit contexts (environmental, cultural, psychological) that these planned structures reveal. Using the history of infrastructure, we will assess recent historiographical responses to the long-standing debate between 'social constructivism' (society determines technology / science) and 'technological determinism' (science / technology determines society), particularly those which attempt to define a third 'hybrid' reading in which technological and social choices reciprocally define each other. General themes will include the increasing place of ethics in constructing infrastructures, the role of economics in both 'big science' and massive technological projects, the development and role of the military-industrial complex, and the problem of complexity in contemporary historiography. Specific infrastructures studied as examples will include those centered around the railroad, the modern financial system, the urban newspaper, the concentration camp, the electrical grid, nuclear missile guidance technologies, and the Arpanet / Internet. Authors read will include Edwards, Habermas, Haraway, Hughes, Latour, Luhmann, Rabinbach, and Simmel.  Students will be expected to complete a 30-35 page original paper using primary sources.

 

Course:

HIST 331  Latin America: Race, Religion and Revolution

Professor:

Miles Rodriguez  

CRN:

90161

Schedule:

  Wed     9:20 AM - 11:40 AM Olin 303

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  American Studies; Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Latin American/Iberian Studies; Study of Religions

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. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

 

Cross-listed courses:

 

Course:

ANTH 218  The Rift and the Nile

Professor:

John Ryle  

CRN:

90189

Schedule:

Mon  Wed     10:20 AM - 11:40 AM Bard Chapel

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap

20

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Africana Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies; Historical Studies; Human Rights

 

Course:

CLAS 114  The Ancient World, 750-480 BC

Professor:

James Romm  

CRN:

90203

Schedule:

Mon  Wed     2:00 PM - 3:20 PM Olin Languages Center 115

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

Class cap

30

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Historical Studies

 

Course:

EUS 321  GIS for Environmental Justice

Professor:

Susan Winchell-Sweeney  

CRN:

90170

Schedule:

  Mon Wed   10:20 AM - 12:40 AM Henderson Comp. Center 101A

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap

12

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Historical Studies; Human Rights

 

Course:

HR 253  Abolishing Prisons and the Police

Professor:

Kwame Holmes  

CRN:

90135

Schedule:

Mon  Wed     2:00 PM - 3:20 PM Olin 203

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap

18

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Africana Studies; American Studies; Historical Studies

 

Course:

PS 264  U.S. and the Modern Middle East

Professor:

Frederic Hof  

CRN:

90024

Schedule:

Mon  Wed     8:30 AM - 9:50 AM Olin 305

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

Class cap

18

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  American Studies; Global & International Studies; Historical Studies; Middle Eastern Studies

 

Course:

THTR 249  Black Experience in American Theater

Professor:

Nilaja Sun Gordon  

CRN:

90358

Schedule:

 Tue      10:10 AM - 1:10 PM Fisher Performing Arts Center Studio North

Distributional Area:

AA Analysis of Art

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap

12

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Africana Studies; Historical Studies