This course is a thematic survey of United States history from European conquest through the Civil War. Through lectures, discussions, and readings, students will examine the nation's colonial origin, the impact of European conquest of the native peoples, the struggle for national independence, and the formation of a national government. The second half of the course will focus on the making of a modern nation. Topics will include the expansion of the market economy, chattel slavery, and the factory system. The course will also look at early urbanization, the rise of egalitarianism, religious movements, the first women's movements, and the defeat of the southern secessionist movement. No prerequisites. This course is the same as HIST 101D in the history curriculum.

The Russian Revolution began in 1917; the First World War ended in 1918. The two decades between these events and the 1939 invasion of Poland which began the Second World War witnessed transformative change around the globe, and set in motion forces which continue to shape the world we live in today. Colonial domination in Asia and Africa faced new tides of resistance in the international and communist movements. Women, some newly emboldened by the English suffragette movement, pushed back in myriad ways against the conventions and vested interests that denied them access to public life. Spectacular developments in science, art, music, and fashion accompanied spectacular failures in political economy around the globe. Recession, depression, and the rise of fascism in the 1930s were not merely American or central European experiences. This seminar will explore some of the many threads in the vivid fabric of the interwar world, threads which may not appear so distant to us as the second decade of the twenty-first century unfolds.
The two seminar sections will meet jointly once a week for lectures or films, and separately once a week for discussion of primary-source readings. In addition to the rich historical material that the course addresses, students will begin to learn the basic skills of the historian: asking questions, finding and analyzing relevant documents or primary sources, and identifying different kinds of interpretations of those sources. Open to first-year students only.

This course is a thematic survey of United States history from European conquest through the Civil War. Through lectures, discussions, and readings, students will examine the nation's colonial origin, the impact of European conquest on the native peoples, the struggle for national independence, and the formation of a national government. The second half of the course will focus on the making of a modern democratic nation. Topics will include the expansion of the market economy, chattel slavery, and the factory system. The course will also examine early urbanization, the rise of egalitarianism, westward expansion, the Second Great Awakening, the first women's movements, and the abolition of slavery. The course concludes with an account of the Civil War and the Lincoln administration. No prerequisites. Fulfills history major and minor premodern requirement. This course is the same as AMST 101D, listed in the American Studies Program.

This course is an introduction to the history of Latin America's colonial period. The course begins with an overview of the century before the first encounters between European and indigenous peoples in the New World, and traces major political and economic developments in the Americas and the Atlantic world that contributed to the shaping of specific social formations in South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean Basin from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. The course will consider not only the establishment and evolution of dominant institutions such as the colonial state and church, but also racial and gender relations that characterized the colonial societies of Brazil and Spanish America. Fulfills the history major and minor premodern requirement.

This course surveys the history of the early Middle Ages. Relying mainly on primary sources, it traces the broad contours of 800 years of European and Mediterranean history. The course covers the gradual merging of Roman and Germanic cultures, the persistence of Roman ideas during the Middle Ages, the slow Christianization of Europe, monasticism, the rise of Islam, and Norse society. Readings include Augustine's Confessions, a scandalous account of the reign of the Emperor Justinian, the Rule of St. Benedict, a translation of the Koran, and Bede's Ecclesiastical History. Fulfills the history major and minor premodern requirement.

Through lectures and discussions, this course will introduce the student to early modern Europe, with special attention to Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, and Russia. It will treat such topics as the Reformation, the emergence of the French challenge to the European equilibrium, Britain's eccentric constitutional course, the pattern of European contacts with the non-European world, the character of daily life in premodern Europe, the Enlightenment, the appearance of Russia on the European scene, and the origins of German dualism, as well as the impact of the French Revolution on Europe. Fulfills the history major and minor premodern requirement.

India is the world's largest democracy. It has a middle-class population larger than the population of France, and a third to a half of the world's computer software is developed and produced there. Not only does India defy simple categorization, but the stereotypes and cliches readily placed on it are grossly misleading. This course is an introduction to both the study of India and the study of history using India as a rich example. The readings and class discussions trace some of the following themes: Muslim rule in India, women in the medieval period, the diversity of cultures in South Asia, religious reform movements, European participation in trade in the Indian Ocean, the British empire, social movements, nationalism, the partition of India and Pakistan, and modern nation states. The course will examine India through a range of sources, particularly sources from South Asia. There are no prerequisites, and the course assumes no prior knowledge about India.

Japan's current cultural and socio-economic malaise has deep roots, whatever its proximate causes in the natural disasters and economic downturns of recent decades. This course examines the institutions of the last period of warrior rule-- the Tokugawa era (seventeenth through nineteenth centuries), and their transformation through the rise of modern Japan from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century.The course addresses the central dilemma of modern Japanese history: the changing meanings of "modernity" and "tradition," and how Japanese have reinvented themselves (and a number of powerful myths along the way) over and over again in the struggle to become modern while remaining "Japanese." Japan's modern history is inseparable from that of the world around it, in particular from the United States, Korea, and China. In addition to tracing how historians have interpreted Japan's economic, political, social, and cultural development, the course explores how Japanese have understood themselves in relation to other peoples, through their own eyes, and through the eyes of people on the margins or outside the heart of Japanese society. No prerequisites. Fulfills history major Asia/Africa distribution requirement.

This course surveys the history of the Islamic(ate) world from the rise of Islam in the sixth century to the rise of post-Monol-Muslim empires--the Ottomans, the safavids, the Mughuls--in the sixteenth century. The course will especially focus on the formation and expansion of Islam as a global civilization and the historical development of the social, cultural, religious, and commercial networks and institutions that connected the Islamicate world during these centuries. Among the topics to be covered are the life and career of the Prophet Muhammad and the emergence of Islam, the expansion of Islamicate world through conquests, conversions and commercial networks, the formation of various Islamic polities and empires, such as the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Seljuks, and the Mamluks, and the issues of authority, power, and legitimacy that confronted these polties. It will also examine the historical development of Islamic institutions such as Sufism and religious law. Fulfills Asia and the history major premodern requirement.

In August 1619, "twenty and odd negars" were traded for food by the crew of a Dutch sailing vessel. That commercial transaction represented the first recorded incident of a permanent African presence in America. Over the next 146 years, this population of Africans would grow to create an African-American population of over four million. The overwhelming majority of this population was enslaved. This course will be an examination of those enslaved millions and their free black fellows--who they were, how they lived, and how the nation was transformed by their presence and experience. Particular attention will be paid to the varieties of African-American experience and how slavery and the presence of peoples of African descent shaped American social, political, intellectual, and economic systems. Students will be presented with a variety of primary and secondary source materials; timely and careful reading of these sources will prepare students for class discussions. Students will be confronted with conflicting bodies of evidence and challenged to analyze these issues and arrive at conclusions for themselves. Fulfills the history major and minor premodern requirement.

Painting in broad strokes on a massive canvas, this course will examine the history of the British Empire from its inception in the sixteenth century through its dissolution in the twentieth. The British Empire, whose beginnings were modest, would by the close of the nineteenth century encompass almost thirteen million square miles and a population of nearly four hundred million. Well before the end of the twentieth century, this empire, the largest the world had ever seen, virtually ceased to exist. Its story, from inception to extinction, is a remarkable one. Internal imperatives, global imperial rivalries, and developments on the periphery impelled the empire forward and ultimately brought about its demise. This course will investigate the evolving characteristics of the British imperial experience and the dynamics responsible for the rise and fall of the British Empire.

As a political entity, the aggregation of central European lands ruled from Vienna for almost four centuries constitutes the strangest major power on the European scene in the past five hundred years. Alone among the great states of Europe, the Habsburg realm accepted cultural heterogeneity and actively sought to avoid war. This course will assess the Habsburg experiment in political and cultural multiculturalism, seeking finally to account for the empire's inability to survive the tensions of the twentieth century. Among the subjects to be considered are: Vienna as the cultural capital of Europe, the role of language in politics, the creative rivalry between Prague and Vienna, the emergence and character of nationalism, the postwar successor states, and the concept of Central Europe. The course will involve lectures and discussions. No knowledge of German is required.

This class examines various ways that people and ideas from the United States have influenced Africa during the past two centuries and how Africans have responded to that involvement. Although much interaction has been at the institutional level of governments and organizations, we will focus primarily on the history of U.S.-African relations at the personal and local level within Africa, studying specific examples of trans-Atlantic cultural, economic, and political influence that changed over time and varied between different parts of Africa. Among the cases to be considered will be several involving African Americans, such as the founding of Liberia and the development of Pan-Africanism. Other topics will include Christian missionaries, explorers, the Cold War, and recent U.S. political, economic, and humanitarian interest in Africa. There are no prerequisites.

This course will examine the circumstances and factors leading to World War II and to the U.S. entry into the war. The course will focus on the disruption of the world order through the rise of German, Japanese, and Italian imperialism. The course will analyze the effect of the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s. Other topics include the military strategies and conduct of the war, its impact on the home front, and its long-term effects on U.S. foreign policy.

This course shall focus on the major trends of U.S. foreign policy from the Spanish-American War to the present. This seminar will examine the actors that have shaped U.S. foreign policy, as well as how such policies are connected to the larger historical forces both at home and abroad. The course will emphasize, in particular, the origins of U.S. foreign policy and its evolution through various time periods and administrations. The course will explore themes such as: What is foreign policy? Does the U.S. need a foreign policy? What is the relationship between race and foreign policy? How do conceptions of manhood and of womanhood affect foreign policy? What are the economic and cultural aspects of foreign policy and their effects? Offered every two to three years.

In the late eleventh century, Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade by calling on European knights to reconquer the city of Jerusalem. The objectives of the first crusaders may have been fairly circumscribed, but for the next four centuries the crusading movement had complex and varied consequences for the inhabitants of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. In this course, we will examine (1) the confluence of religious, political, and economic motivations that inspired crusaders, (2) the extension of the notion of crusade to Islamic Spain and parts of northern Europe, and (3) the manifold interreligious and cross-cultural exchanges (peaceful and violent) that resulted from the crusades. Fulfills history major and minor premodern requirements.

This course will discuss black women of the Atlantic world, from Africa to the United States, the Caribbean, and South America, from the seventeenth century to the present. We will pay particular attention to commonalities among black women of the Atlantic world. The course will examine the impact on black women of the Atlantic slave trade, enslavement, and colonialism. The course will also examine the status of black women cross-culturally, as well as social organization, race, class, and culture. Lastly, the course will analyze the role of black women both in the struggle for freedom and in the women's movement. Works of fiction and films will be used extensively.

This course, open to history majors (and a limited number of INST majors) of sophomore and junior standing, focuses on the conceptual frameworks used by historians and on debates within the profession about the nature of the past and the best way to write about it. The seminar prepares students of history to be productive researchers, insightful readers, and effective writers. The seminar is required for history majors and should be completed before the senior year. Pre-requisite: history or international studies major or permission of instructor. Fulfills history major practice and theory requirement.

This course, open to history majors (and a limited number of INST majors) of sophomore and junior standing, focuses on the conceptual frameworks used by historians and on debates within the profession about the nature of the past and the best way to write about it. The seminar prepares students of history to be productive researchers, insightful readers, and effective writers. The seminar is required for history majors and should be completed before the senior year. Pre-requisite: history or international studies major or permission of instructor. Fulfills history major practice and theory requirement.

As the dividing line between "early modern" and "modern" European history, the French Revolution has often stood as the moment when the Old Regime was definitely brought low by social change. As a period of intense centralization and nationalism, the French Revolution has also been seen as accelerating political developments already underway. This advanced seminar will explore both interpretations of this definitive event in French and European history by asking whether the French Revolution constitutes a break or a continuation with what came before. Utilizing primary and secondary sources - including literature, art, and film - we will explore key developments of the French Revolution from its origins in the eighteenth century to the fall of Napoleon's Empire. Topics will include the Enlightenment, the Terror, the Haitian Revolution, revolutionary culture, gender and sexuality, and Napoleon. This course is recommended for students who have taken at least one course in European history, French, or eighteenth-century intellectual history or political thought. Students without such background are welcome to enroll, but should contact the instructor. This course fulfills the history department premodern distribution requirement and the history department distribution for America/Europe.

This course will examine the rise of British power from the late seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century. Between 1688 and 1815, few years passed when Britain was not doing one of the following: preparing for war; engaging in war; recuperating from war. By 1815 she had emerged as the preeminent power in the world, albeit one whose geopolitical influence was subject to certain notable limitations. The nineteenth century was the age of Pax Britannica. We will seek to understand the sources of British power--cultural, financial, commercial, industrial, maritime, political--as well as its ends and means. If much will be said of strength and victory, this will not be to the exclusion of weakness and defeat. Inasmuch as British power can be comprehended only in relation to the power of other states, a comparative perspective will necessarily inform our investigation. Fulfills the history major and minor premodern requirement.

The goal of this course is to give each history major the experience of a sustained, independent research project, including: formulating a historical question, considering methods, devising a research strategy, locating and critically evaluating primary and secondary sources, placing evidence in context, shaping an interpretation, and presenting documented results. Research topics will be selected by students in consultation with the instructor. Classes will involve student presentations on various stages of their work and mutual critiques, as well as discussions of issues of common interest, such as methods and bibliography. This seminar is open only to senior history majors. Prerequisite: HIST 387. Fulfills history major senior research seminar requirement.

The goal of this course is to give each history major the experience of a sustained, independent research project, including: formulating a historical question, considering methods, devising a research strategy, locating and critically evaluating primary and secondary sources, placing evidence in context, shaping an interpretation, and presenting documented results. Research topics will be selected by students in consultation with the instructor. Classes will involve student presentations on various stages of their work and mutual critiques, as well as discussions of issues of common interest, such as methods and bibliography. This seminar is open only to senior history majors. Prerequisite: HIST 387. Fulfills history major senior research seminar requirement.

The goal of this course is to give each history major the experience of a sustained, independent research project, including: formulating a historical question, considering methods, devising a research strategy, locating and critically evaluating primary and secondary sources, placing evidence in context, shaping an interpretation, and presenting documented results. Research topics will be selected by students in consultation with the instructor. Classes will involve student presentations on various stages of their work and mutual critiques, as well as discussions of issues of common interest, such as methods and bibliography. This seminar is open only to senior history majors. Prerequisite: HIST 387. Fulfills history major senior research seminar requirement.

The honors candidates enrolled in this course will devote their time to the research and writing of their honors theses under the direct supervision of a history faculty member. Prerequisite: HIST 387 or 397 and permission of instructor. Fulfills history major senior research seminar requirement.

For over two millennia Judaism has expressed itself through continual interpretation and reinterpretation of its fundamental teachings. With a particular focus on the mystical strand in Judaism, this course will address the central beliefs and practices of Judaism (e.g., monotheism, covenant, commandments, the Sabbath, and holy days) through study of its rich textual and ritual traditions. Developments in Jewish life and thought will be traced through a variety of literature: the Bible (Torah, prophets, Psalms and the Five Scrolls); rabbinic texts (Mishnah, Talmud, and midrash); poetry (Jehuda ha Levi's "Songs of Zion"); medieval philosophy (Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed); and the mystical strand embodied in the Zohar. Students will gain an appreciation for the origins of Jewish teachings that remain vital in the tradition today.