History Course Descriptions
Note: 300-level history courses are ordinarily open to
sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and to freshmen only with the
consent of the instructor.
History 220
- Late Imperial China
Full course for one semester. This course surveys the history of
late imperial China (sixteenth through nineteenth centuries) by
examining several critical issues in the historiography of this
period. Weekly discussions will address the following topics:
despots, ritualized rulers and the growth of a "bureaucratic
monarchy"; global economic crisis, peasant rebellion, and the
Ming–Qing cataclysm; ethnicity, violence, and exchange on Chinese
frontiers; lineage formation, strategic marriages, and the
consolidation of gentry rule; local magistrates and scholars and
their popular tales; migration, mobility, and social anxiety in a
prosperous age; gender and sexuality in Qing Confucian ideology;
exploration, trade, and emigration on the south China coast; and
the challenge of sea-born imperialists in the nineteenth century.
Conference.
History 221
- Modern China
Full course for one semester. This course examines the numerous
transformations in nineteenth- and twentieth-century China from the
perspective of both Euro-American and Sinified modernities. We will
begin by rethinking both "modernity" and "nation," locating through
that process new enigmatic local subjects for historical study,
such as nuxing/women, qingnian/youth,
nongming/peasants, or renmin/people. Major discussion
topics will include imperialist wars, semi-colonialism, and
anti-imperialist movements; the rise of a new historical
consciousness; constructions of Manchu, Chinese, and other ethnic
identities; contested nationalisms; peasant rebellions and
recurring political revolutions; cultural iconoclasm and cultural
revolution; Communist mobilizing in rural and urban settings; and
Chinese socialism and socialist China. Conference.
History 275
- Culture and Society in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century America
Full course for one year; semesters may be taken separately.
Chronological survey of selected social, cultural, and political
developments in the United States, 1820s to the 1940s. We will be
especially concerned with the interaction of the society (defined
here as social, economic, and political institutions) and culture
(the values, ideals, and structures of meaning) through which
Americans understood and interpreted private and public life.
First semester covers the 1820s to the 1890s. Topics include
evangelical revival and reform; slave labor in the agrarian South
and wage labor, industrialization, and urbanization in the North;
the Western frontier as place and myth; the coming of civil war and
the legacies of Reconstruction; the populist moment and subsequent
decline of popular politics; the growth of corporations and labor
strife; the significance of the 1893 World’s Fair; urban
evangelical crusades; and the commercialization of leisure at the
turn of the century.
Second semester covers the 1890s through the 1940s. Topics include
the ideals and reforms of the Progressive era; a comparison of
World War I and the influenza pandemic; the 1919 race riot in
Chicago; domestic culture in the 1920s; the respective economic and
cultural effects of the Great Depression, Dust Bowl, and New Deal;
U.S. prosecution of World War II abroad and its effects on the
homefront; and the global and domestic legacies of the war.
The course is open to sophomores considering the history major and
transfer students; others, including students in their first year,
will be admitted as space permits by consent of the instructor.
Conference with occasional lectures.
History 276
- Culture and Society in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century America
Full course for one year; semesters may be taken separately.
Chronological survey of selected social, cultural, and political
developments in the United States, 1820s to the 1940s. We will be
especially concerned with the interaction of the society (defined
here as social, economic, and political institutions) and culture
(the values, ideals, and structures of meaning) through which
Americans understood and interpreted private and public life.
First semester covers the 1820s to the 1890s. Topics include
evangelical revival and reform; slave labor in the agrarian South
and wage labor, industrialization, and urbanization in the North;
the Western frontier as place and myth; the coming of civil war and
the legacies of Reconstruction; the populist moment and subsequent
decline of popular politics; the growth of corporations and labor
strife; the significance of the 1893 World’s Fair; urban
evangelical crusades; and the commercialization of leisure at the
turn of the century.
Second semester covers the 1890s through the 1940s. Topics include
the ideals and reforms of the Progressive era; a comparison of
World War I and the influenza pandemic; the 1919 race riot in
Chicago; domestic culture in the 1920s; the respective economic and
cultural effects of the Great Depression, Dust Bowl, and New Deal;
U.S. prosecution of World War II abroad and its effects on the
homefront; and the global and domestic legacies of the war.
The course is open to sophomores considering the history major and
transfer students; others, including students in their first year,
will be admitted as space permits by consent of the instructor.
Conference with occasional lectures.
History 277
- Law and American History
Full course for one semester. In this course we will examine the
historical development of customary, common, positive, judicial,
and federal and state constitutional law in the United States from
the American Revolution to the present. Participants will explore
the role of customary and English common law and the development of
an American doctrine of constitutional law in the new republic. We
will analyze the growth of the legal profession during the next two
centuries and changing ideas about the role of law in the United
States. Course readings will consider the evolution of legal
doctrines about property, corporations, employment, personal
injury, and criminal law. We will pay particular attention to the
relationship between economics and the law; to unwritten law; and
to laws affecting women, Native Americans, and racial, religious
and sexual minorities. In addition to historical texts, we will
read legal cases and examine several famous trials. Conference. Not
offered 2005-06.
History 278
- U.S. Politics and Culture, 1929–79
Full course for one semester. Examines the immediate and long-term
social, cultural, and political effects of the Depression, World
War II, and the Cold War, and the changing political landscapes of
the 1960s and 1970s. Topics include the rise and fall of organized
labor, the emergence of the civil rights movement, suburbanization,
the economic and legal status of women, new immigrants after 1965,
and the cultural roots of the new American right. The course is
open to sophomores considering the history major and transfer
students; others, including students in their first year, will be
admitted as space permits by consent of the instructor. Conference
with occasional lectures. Not offered 2005-06.
History 301
- European Diplomatic History: 1848–1914
Full course for one semester. A study of the development of
international relations and the foreign policies of the Great
Powers from the mid-nineteenth century to World War I. Topics
include the rise of nationalism and its effects on European society
and diplomacy, Bismarckian diplomacy, imperialism, the growth of
the alliance system, and the coming of the war. Lecture-conference.
History 302
- European Diplomatic History Since 1914
Full course for one semester. An examination of international
relations and foreign policies of the Great Powers from the
outbreak of World War I to the Cold War and the "New Europe." Major
emphasis is on the origins of World War II and the Cold War; the
interaction of strategic, ideological, economic, social, and other
factors in foreign policy; and problems of historical
interpretation. Lecture-conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 303
- The Cold War
Full course for one semester. A survey of the diplomatic,
strategic, and ideological conflict between the United States and
the Soviet Union, from the last years of the Second World War
through the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The course will
emphasize the early years of the Cold War and the sources of the
Soviet–American antagonism; other topics will include the atomic
bomb in 1945 and the subsequent nuclear arms race; the Cold War in
American society and politics; the Cuban missile crisis of 1962;
the Vietnam war; and in general the role of ideology, public
opinion, military strategy, and domestic politics in American and
Soviet policy-making. There will be discussion throughout of the
controversies among historians. Conference.
History 304
- Rise of the Modern State?: The Theory and Practice of Monarchy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Full course for one semester. Starting with the conceptual
foundations of royal power, we will trace the emergence of the
national monarchy in Europe, examining how kings (and queens) tried
to establish their authority over powerful rivals, including
nobles, representative assemblies, and privileged corporations
(such as cities and the clergy). Was the expansion of royal power
achieved through coercion or cooperation? Were these new monarchies
centralized modern states, or did they resemble more closely their
decentralized medieval predecessors? In thinking about these
questions, we will examine institutional developments and elements
of late medieval and early modern political culture, including
public rituals and ceremonies, clientage, gender ideologies, and
court culture. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 307
- War and Society in Europe from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century
Full course for one semester. The course will trace developments in
war preparation and war fighting, the interrelationships between
armed forces and the state and society from which they emerged, in
the Great Powers of Europe from the Old Regime in the eighteenth
century through the French Revolution and industrialization to the
emergence of "total war" and the "home front" in World War I.
Themes of the course will include civil-military relations; the
economic side of war; the internal structures and values of
military forces in relation to their society; the effect of
industrialization, political and social democratization, and
technological change; ideas and doctrines of war (including
Clausewitz and Mahan); and the mutual impact of armed forces with
state power and political and social institutions and values.
Recommended but not required: Humanities 210 or 220. Conference.
Not offered 2005-06.
History 308
- Special Topics: War and Society in the Twentieth Century
Full course for one semester. In each semester a different specific
topic within twentieth-cent history will be used to examine how
modern Western societies have experienced war, hot and cold, and
the interrelationships between armed forces and the states and
societies from which they have emerged. Questions will include
civil-military relations in a period of mass democracy and
totalitarianism; the effect of advanced industrialization and
technological change on war preparation and war fighting; the role
of institutions, values, and ideologies in civilian and military
policy-making; and how far one can speak of the "militarization" of
modern society. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 314
- Medicine and Society in Europe, 1300–1700
Full course for one semester. This course examines ways that
Europeans understood health and illness from the later Middle Ages
through the Scientific Revolution, focusing primarily on two
themes: the changing intellectual formation and social status of
the learned physician, and the changing systems of public health
care that developed in response to new epidemic diseases, religious
and political upheaval, and the conquest of the New World.
Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 323
- Japanese Modernities
Full course for one semester. A historical investigation of Japan’s
competing modernities, 1870–1960. Major topics will include Meiji
Westernization and its critics, statist narrations of modern
Japanese subjectivity, hierarchy and individualism in modernist
reform ideologies, territorial and ethnic displacements within the
Japanese empire, cosmopolitan literariness and nostalgia for
cultural and spiritual homelands, ethnic nationalism in the
cultural sciences, and transcendence of the past in Japanese
painting and films. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 324
- Rural China
Full course for one semester. This course examines peasants and
peasant society in China from the fifteenth century to the present,
focusing on interactions between peasants and the state,
relationships that have been mediated by rural elites, political
activists, and market forces, among others. Our first objective
will be a historical understanding of peasant families, rural
economies, and village society and culture in different areas of
China since the mid Ming Dynasty. We will then employ this
knowledge to reassess theoretical models that have attempted to
explain peasant protests and uprisings, state penetration and rural
defense, and various rural transformations stimulated by market
forces, industrialization, and radical political change.
Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 326
- Imperialism and Colonialism in East Asia
Full course for one semester. This course will introduce some of
the theoretical literature on imperialism and colonialism before
examining East Asian experiences with such exploitation and control
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Major topics will
include imperialist policies; economic imperialism; colonialism as
a system of values and social relations; the relationship of
culture and power in the colony; colonial elites and nationalist
movements; gender, race, and class in both colonial and nationalist
agendas; colonial writers and their literature; and the promises of
decolonization and postcoloniality. Conference.
History 327
- Meiji Restoration/Revolution
Full course for one semester. Few events in Japanese history
receive more attention than the Meiji Restoration (or Revolution).
A critical marker in Japanese political history, the restoration is
also perceived as a major watershed in economic, social, and
cultural developments. This course will examine the specific drama
of imperial restoration, the modernizing revolution initiated from
above thereafter, and the historical contexts that help to explain
both. Major topics will include agrarian uprisings, new religious
movements, and ee ja nai ka dancing; nativism and world
rectification thought; the "opening" of Japan and the effect of
international trade and diplomacy on internal Japanese conflicts;
bakafu attempts at political reform and the avoidance of
foreign invasion; the military rebellion of "loyalist" samurai; and
the transformative changes initiated by the Meiji oligarchy after
1868. Readings will include both participant observations and
post-Meiji assessments. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 328
- Chinese Frontiers
Full course for one semester. After 1400 Chinese explorers and
traders increasingly extended the limits of the "known world" in
their search for profit, knowledge, tribute, and exotica;
large-scale Chinese emigration followed in their footsteps.
Conceptual and physical boundaries were also challenged by Manchu
troops from the north and European traders and diplomats from the
south. This course will explore the nature of this geographical and
epistemological boundary transgression from 1400 to 1800. After a
brief examination of Zheng He’s great explorations in the early
fifteenth century, we will discuss Chinese practices of charting
and mapping physical frontiers. Official and private attempts to
represent and domesticate cultures and societies on China’s
periphery will be the focus of our second exploration, and the
effect of this conceptual and physical "travel" upon accepted
notions of ethnicity, gender, and self-identity will make up the
final leg of our voyage. Conference.
History 329
- Education, Culture, and Society in Late Imperial and Early Republican China
Full course for one semester. This course focuses on the
development of education and its changing relationship to society,
culture, and politics in late imperial and early Republican China.
We will trace the history of Chinese education from the apex of the
civil examination system in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
through the decline and eventual abolition of the civil-service
examination, and finally to the establishment of a new education
system at the turn of the twentieth century. Secondly, we will
examine this development from a variety of perspectives, including
the top-down (official representation), the bottom-up (daily
practice), and the "gray" area where state and society interacted.
Finally, within this framework, we will focus on a variety of
themes, including schooling, literacy, educational specialization,
print culture, and gender. Readings will be based on historical
monographs, regulations, and popular literature on the topic.
Prerequisite: sophomore standing. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 332
- Early Modern British Social History: Villages, Towns, and Cities, 1500–1700
Full course for one semester. This course centers its attention on
the history of rural and urban communities in the context of the
great religious, political, social, and cultural upheavals of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the Reformation, the political
revolutions of the seventeenth century, and the development of
commercial society and empire. Drawing on a wide range of
historical and literary sources, special attention will be given to
examining the processes of social, political, and cultural change
that helped the British Isles emerge from the seventeenth century
with a powerful state and a modernizing economy, both centered in
England. Conference.
History 334
- The English Renaissance
Full course for one semester. Did the English experience a
"renaissance" in the Tudor and Stuart age? Through examination of a
variety of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writings and
artifacts, the course explores the cultural history of England and
the English from the time of King Henry VIII to King Charles II.
Particular attention will be paid to works concerned with the
representation of authority, community, gender, social rank, and
personal identity. The course will analyze the role of the literary
and visual arts in the shaping of culture, the relationship between
elite and popular cultural forms, and the development of new
religious ideas and practices and new ideologies and mentalities.
Conference.
History 335
- The Development of Britain, c. 1680–1830
Full course for one semester. This course focuses on British
sociocultural and political history, and to a lesser extent on
British religious and intellectual history, as Britain changed from
an agrarian and pre-industrial society in the seventeenth century
to a commercial and industrial society in the early nineteenth
century. It analyzes the development of the British state and
British empire during the "long eighteenth century," focusing
especially on the formation of political hierarchies and social
classes and the growth of characteristic political, economic, and
cultural institutions from the Revolution of 1688 to the Napoleonic
wars and the beginnings of Reform. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 337
- Community, Authority, and Culture in Europe’s "Wars of Religion"
Full course for one semester. Concentrating on the history and
culture of northern Europe (especially, the British Isles, France,
the Netherlands, and Germany) between 1500 and 1700, this course
focuses on the formation of the characteristic ideologies and
mentalities regarding society, politics, religion, culture, and the
person in the era of Europe’s "Wars of Religion." Using documents,
texts, and visual sources from the period as well as modern
historical interpretations, the course will introduce students to
the major developments and the historical interpretations and
controversies they have generated. Conference.
History 338
- University and Society in Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Full course for one semester. This course examines the origins and
early development of one of medieval Europe’s most important
legacies, the university. We will explore topics including the
social, legal, institutional, and curricular formation of the first
universities; the controversies surrounding the assimilation of the
ancient Greek and medieval Arabic philosophical tradition;
ecclesiastical and secular patronage in the careers of masters and
students; clashes between "town and gown"; the role of
university-trained scholars in conflicts over papal and monarchical
power, heresy, and religious reform; and the relation of
universities to the intellectual and cultural innovations often
associated with "Renaissance humanism." Prerequisite: sophomore
standing; prior coursework in history, sociology, or political
science is preferred. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 340
- Women in Modern Europe
Full course for one semester. This course analyzes women’s history
as an integral component of the history of Europe since the
eighteenth century. We will trace the major trends in the cultural
evolution of ideas about gender, the social organization of women’s
work, women’s roles in the family, and the development of feminist
political strategies. We will highlight how women’s experiences
have differed due to class, ethnicity, and national context, but
also seek to define the common ground that European women have
shared. Through our study of European women’s history, we will also
investigate the basic problems and assumptions of the history of
gender. The course incorporates extensive use of primary texts
created by women, allowing more immediate access to the ideas and
experience of major political and intellectual figures, as well as
ordinary individuals. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 341
- The Nineteenth-century American Frontier and West
Full course for one semester. This course explores frontier and
Western history as several interlocking themes by conceptualizing
the West as a multicultural region of men and women and as a
changing frontier characterized by U.S. expansion, governmental
control, and capitalism. We will assess critically questions about
the location of the West and its distinctiveness as a region and
will examine the native Americans, Hispanics, immigrants, and
slaves who populated the West; the many meanings of gender; and the
relationship between government, business, and the West. We will
also analyze the construction of historical memory and the
mythologies that Americans have fashioned about the
nineteenth-century West. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 342
- Special Topics in European Historiography: Historical Practice in Britain from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century
Full course for one semester. In each semester a different topic
will be used to examine the traditions, practices, and methods of
historical study and historical writing in Europe since ca. 1500. A
central aim of the course will be to study the evolving
characteristics of history as a discipline, the development of its
distinctive methods and interpretative schools, and its
relationships to neighboring disciplines in the humanities and
social sciences. The special topic for 2004-05 is the treatment by
Britons themselves of the history of Reformation and Revolution in
the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
beginning with the earliest accounts written in the period itself
and moving to the debates and discussions about these major
developments in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth
centuries. Prerequisite: at least one semester of Humanities 210,
220, or 230 and at least one history course. Conference. Not
offered 2005-06.
History 343
- The Third Reich
Full course for one semester. A study of society, culture, economy,
and regime in the Hitler state. Topics will include the Weimar
crisis; the origins, structure, and evolution of the National
Socialist regime; Hitler and the Hitler myth; Nazi culture; daily
life; total war; and the Holocaust. Special attention will be given
to the question of complicity and to the historiographical
controversies associated with the Nazi question, including their
sources in social theory. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 344
- Germany: 1918-1945
Full course for one semester. This course introduces students to
some of the major themes and problems posed by the historical study
of Germany between the World Wars and beyond, among them the Weimar
Republic and its attendant crises, interwar cultural and
intellectual activity, and the rise and consolidation of National
Socialism. The course also broaches issues of more global concern:
what does it mean to live in a time of political and existential
crisis? what does it mean to come to terms with a morally
troublesome past? how do interpretations of this period of German
history continue to underwrite claims about the nature of modernity
itself? Reading includes both primary sources and secondary
accounts, supplemented by music and film. Conference.
History 345
- Weimar: State, Society, and Culture
Full course for one semester. A discussion of Germany’s contested
modernity during the Weimar period, beginning with the Wilhelmine
monarchy, World War I, and the Revolution of 1918 and concluding
with the National Socialists’ destruction of the Republic. Readings
focus on the problems of state structure and political practice,
social and economic change, conflicts in culture, and the relations
among these spheres. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 346
- Technology and Social Thought in 20th Century Europe
Full course for one semester. "The fully enlightened Earth radiates
disaster triumphant." So the German philosophers Theodor Adorno and
Max Horkheimer argued in 1944, just before Hiroshima provided an
eerily literal proof. Their unease was shared by many. Something
about man’s attempt to master the world by technological means had
gone seriously awry. This course will examine how European
intellectuals of the twentieth century revisited notions of
culture, nature, politics, economics and religion as part of a
wide-ranging reassessment of the modern age prompted by the rise of
technocracy. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 347
- Interpreting the Scientific Revolution
Full course for one semester. This course examines the concept of
the "Scientific Revolution" and its usefulness as an interpretive
framework for understanding the innovations in natural science
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the era of
Copernicus, Galileo, Harvey, and Newton. The course will consider
classic texts by historians who constructed the concept, as well as
more recent studies that have challenged it from a variety of
methodological and interpretive standpoints, such as sociological
and cultural perspectives. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 348
- Sex, Crime, and the State in Modern Europe
Full course for one semester. What about sex is criminal and what
about crime is sexy? The answers to these questions have changed
drastically through the ages, because the place where sex and crime
intersect is a battleground of religion, law, politics, and
science. This course will explore not only the varied
interpretations of the sexual body and its functions but also how
they have affected social organization on the broadest level.
Beginning with an intensive reading of Foucault’s History of
Sexuality, we will examine the interplay of power and the body
in the areas of Enlightenment models of anatomy, pornography and
politics, degeneration and national health, prostitution, sexual
violence, psychological definitions of deviance, and the emergence
of homosexual identities. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 349
- From Liberalism to Liberation: Social Action in the Twentieth Century
Full course for one semester. This course considers competing
notions of freedom articulated by movements for social change as
they evolved over the course of the twentieth century (in Europe
above all). It proceeds from the crisis of liberalism and the
advent of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary alternatives, to
the mid-century rise of the welfare state, to decolonization and
liberation movements in the post-war period fueled by concerns with
gender, race and the non-human, and finally to some attempts to
rearticulate the liberal project for the 21st century. Readings
include texts from John Dewey, Lenin, Luxembourg, Trotsky, Giovanni
Gentile, Carl Schmitt, Fanon, Marcuse, Foucault, Peter Singer, and
Richard Rorty. Conference.
History 350
- Renaissance Italy: State, Culture, and Society
Full course for one semester. This course will examine the social,
political, and cultural developments associated with the rise of
the Northern Italian communes and the gradual development of the
territorial city-state system during the trecento and quattrocento.
Drawing on a wide range of historical sources and current
scholarship, we will examine the interplay between family and
social relations, political theory and practice (in both republics
and signories), economic expansion, and the flourishing artistic
and literary production of the "Renaissance." Particular attention
will be devoted to the rise of humanist culture in both Republican
and courtly settings. Conference.
History 353
- The French Revolution, 1775–1800
Full course for one semester. Within a generally chronological
framework, the course will focus on the social and cultural history
of the French Revolution. Particular attention will be given to the
ideological origins of the Revolution, the question of class, the
popular movement, revolutionary culture, gender and citizenship,
the role of terror, and the nature of counter-revolution. Another
focus of the course will be the historiography of the French
Revolution. Works from both traditional historiography and
contemporary revisionist historiography will be included on the
syllabus. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 355
- Social and Cultural History of Nineteenth-cent France
Full course for one semester. This course investigates French
history from Napoleon to the eve of the Great War, focusing on
social organization and the creation of cultural meaning. Topics
include the transformation of rural France, migration and
urbanization, the development of popular political consciousness
and mass politics, class conflict, the spread of literacy, the
evolution of French national identity, changes in gender roles and
family structure, and the role of the state in cultural production.
As we explore these topics we will also interrogate the
methodological boundaries between social and cultural history.
Through an analysis of secondary sources and theoretical texts, we
will consider what is facilitated or hindered by various
methodological approaches. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 356
- The Republic of Letters: Topics in the French Enlightenment
Full course for one semester. The major focus of the course will be
on the close reading of selected texts by leading figures of the
eighteenth-cent French Enlightenment--Montesquieu, Voltaire,
Diderot, and Rousseau--as well as representative "minor" texts.
These works will be contextualized through the reading of modern
interpretive studies of the social and cultural history of the
Enlightenment by such historians as Robert Darnton, Dena Goodman,
Daniel Gordon, and Sarah Maza. The course will also consider
certain theoretical issues of the study of the Enlightenment and as
posed notably by Kant, Habermas, and Foucault. Conference. Not
offered 2005-06.
History 357
- France and the French Colonial World, 1500-1750
Full course for one semester. This course will explore the social,
political and cultural processes that established France as a
preeminent European power, fostered the growth of the royal state,
and transformed French culture and society from the Renaissance
through the first half of the reign of Louis XV. We will also
examine the development of the French overseas empire in New
France, Louisiana and the Caribbean during this period. Among the
topics we will address are: the impact of the Reformation and the
Wars of Religion; the growth of the "absolute monarchy" and its
social, political and cultural consequences; the changing nature of
elite and popular cultures; and the cultural, economic and
political relationships between France and its disparate colonial
societies. Conference.
History 359
- Native Americans in the United States, 1787–1887
Full course for one semester. In this course we will examine the
history of indigenous peoples who lived in the territory claimed by
the United States during the first century of American nationhood.
We will analyze the meeting of Native Americans and immigrants from
the perspective of each group. Conference participants will
consider U.S. Indian policy, the importance of the construction of
"Indianness" to the formulation of a white American identity, and
the linkage between policy and identity in reimagining the legal
meaning of sovereignty. We will probe critically the native
responses to U.S. policies and to Anglo, Hispanic, and Asian
migrations onto Indian lands through readings that examine the many
cultures of the first peoples, native formulations of their own
identities, and the varied Indian responses to white pressure to
adopt American standards. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 361
- Colonial America
Full course for one semester. This course will examine the cultural
conflicts and creative adaptations that occurred as Indians,
Europeans, and Africans encountered each other on the North
American continent. While exploring patterns of cultural
interaction we will pay particular attention to the social
construction of race and gender. We will also investigate the
changing nature of religious belief and the relationship between
politics, economy, and society. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 362
- Revolutionary America
Full course for one semester. In the late eighteenth-cent Americans
severed their colonial relationship with England, formed an
independent nation, and laid the foundations for many of the
political institutions and social norms that persist to this day.
This course will focus on the causes of the War of Independence and
the meaning of American revolutionary ideology. We will address
some of the major conflicts that characterized the era, including
the tension between imperial policy and local control, liberty and
slavery, enlightenment rationalism and evangelical religion,
private property and communal interests, and Indian sovereignty and
westward expansion. Particular attention will be paid to the
debates over the drafting and ratification of the Federal
Constitution and the subsequent rise of partisan politics in the
new nation. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 364
- Civil War and Reconstruction
Full course for one semester. This course will examine the causes,
conduct, and consequences of the Civil War. We will first compare
social and ideological developments in the North and South and
analyze the sectional and constitutional debates leading to the
secession crisis and the outbreak of war. We will then study the
Civil War itself, examining not only Union and Confederate wartime
politics and military strategy but the social history of the
conflict as well, paying close attention to the experience of
common soldiers and fugitive slaves. Finally, we will explore the
tremendous challenges involved in attempting to build an
interracial political democracy after the destruction of slavery
and the defeat of the Confederacy. Conference.
History 365
- Consumer Cultures in Historical Perspective
Full course for one semester. We will examine the ways in which
historians have employed various theories about the economic,
social, and culture meanings of consumption and commodities to
describe the material worlds and mentalities of the past.
Historians’ debates about when identifiable consumer cultures
emerged will be explored, with emphasis on how these debates
illuminate our understanding of the development of Western
capitalism. We will consider changes in production as well as
consumption, and how such developments altered peoples’
understandings of self, class, and community. Readings focus on
cases in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, with some comparative material from earlier periods and
Britain. The course is open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors,
with preference given to majors in history and the social sciences.
Conference.
History 366
- Voluntary Associations in the United States
Full course for one semester. This conference explores the history
of nonprofit organizations in the United States. We will focus
primarily on the development of public benefit nonprofits but will
also examine religious and mutual benefit organizations. Conference
participants will interrogate the conceptual space that voluntary
associations have occupied in American life and the dynamic
relationships between voluntary associations, government, and
business over the past two centuries. We will consider the function
that nonprofits have historically played in empowering marginalized
groups, such as women and ethnic, racial, sexual, and political
minorities; the utilization of the nonprofit sector by the wealthy
to achieve their goals; and the evolution of constitutional
constraints and legal regulations pertaining to the operation of
nonprofits. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 369
- American Slavery
Full course for one semester. This course is organized around a
series of key questions that have driven the historical scholarship
on slavery over the last several decades and which continue to
spark historiographical debate: What was slavery and how did it
differ from other forms of exploitation? What role did slavery play
in the making of the modern world? What was new about New World
slavery, particularly in the American South? Why did Europeans turn
to African slave labor to develop the Americas? What role did
Africans play in the slave trade and what impact did the trade have
upon Africa? What was the nature of the master-slave relationship
and how did it change over time? How did slavery shape the
political economy of the American South and the United States as a
whole? To what extent did enslaved Africans and their descendants
lose, maintain, or transform elements of their African cultural
past in the Americas? In what ways did slaves resist their
enslavement? Conference.
History 374
- Gender and Sex
Full course for one semester. Examination of the changing ideas
about gender and sex roles in the context of key transformations
from the late nineteenth through the late twentieth centuries in
America. These include the second industrial revolution, which
enabled women and men to live on their own outside of household
economies, the emergence of modern consumer culture, service in
same-sex militaries during two world wars, the rise of social
scientific and psychological experts who named and quantified
"deviant" and "normal" sexual practice, and the so-called sexual
revolutions of the 1960s and beyond. Prerequisite: sophomore
standing or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered
2005-06.
History 378
- Gender and Family
Full course for one semester. The course begins with the rise and
spread of waged labor, with emphasis on how new economic structures
altered household and familial life. Families under slavery will be
considered, especially African Americans under slavery and in
transition to freedom. Migration and resettlement in the West
shaped families on the frontier and workers in male-dominated
mining towns. The legal and political meanings of marriage also
changed; we will examine arguments for and against married women's
ownership of property, and Mormon polygamy, to see how
nineteenth-century Americans understood the relationship between
patriarchy (legal rights of fathers and husbands over children and
wives) and democracy. Prerequisite: sophomore standing or consent
of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 381
- Rebellion, Revolution, and Independence in Latin America
Full course for one semester. This class examines the breakdown of
colonial rule in Latin America from the 1750s through independence
in the 1820s. Starting with a brief examination of the late
colonial societies and economies of Latin America and the
Caribbean, and their relations to European powers, the course
focuses on violent opposition and resistance to the colonial order
by different sectors of society. We will study in detail indigenous
and peasant rebellions in central Mexico and highland Peru, the
slave rebellion and struggle for independence in Haiti, and the
wars of independence in Spanish America. The course pays particular
attention to the different social, economic, and political
objectives of the various movements, the different manners in which
they articulated their grievances and demands, and the complex
interplay between racial and class dynamics within Latin American
societies and tensions in the metropolis–colony relationship.
Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 384
- The Mexican Revolution
Full course for one semester. This course examines the roots,
development, and effect of the Mexican Revolution (1910–17), from
the Porfiriato through the institutionalization of PRI rule and the
"miracle" of the 1940s and 1950s. Principal themes include
regionalism and tensions caused by centralization;
industrialization, economic development and dependency; class
conflict; gender, citizenship, and political participation; and the
production of a modern Mexican identity. Lecture-conference.
History 385
- Catholicism and Counter-Reform in the Spanish World
Full course for one semester. This course examines the development
and maturation of counter-reform Catholicism in the Spanish world
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Topics to be
explored include the collapse of religious pluralism in medieval
Iberia and the emergence of militant intolerance, the intellectual
and theological challenges provoked by the conquest of the
Americas, the varieties and gendering of elite religiosity,
church-state relations, and popular religion in both Spain and the
Americas. Conference. Not offered 2005-06.
History 386
- Andean Civilization and the Spanish Conquest
Full course for one semester. This course focuses on Andean society
from the rise of the Inka Empire in the fourteenth century through
the Spanish conquest and the establishment of the colonial order in
the 1500s. Topics include the political and material organization
of the Inka Empire, ideology and religious practice, and the impact
of conquest and disease on the indigenous societies of the Andes.
We then examine the effects of Spanish attempts to "re-form"
indigenous societies by the forcible introduction of Catholicism
and Spanish understandings of property and exchange, the imposition
of Spanish imperial government, and the dismemberment and
reorganization of indigenous polities. Conference. Not offered
2005-06.
History 389
- Golden Age Spain
Full course for one semester. A study of Spain from its meteoric
rise as a global power in the sixteenth century to the catastrophic
crises of the 1640s, this course examines central issues in early
modern European history, such as the rise of the absolutist state,
the economic and political effects of transatlantic imperialism,
growing religious orthodoxy and intolerance, and the intellectual
and aesthetic complexity of the Baroque. Specific topics will
include Iberian regionalism and its political effects; the
political, economic, and intellectual impact of colonialism on
Castilian society; the Spanish economy; Spanish Catholicism; the
role of Spain in European politics and diplomacy; and Golden Age
Spanish culture. Conference.
History 391
- Ancient History: Greece
See Classics 371 for description.
Classics 371 Description
History 392
- Special Topics in Greek History
See Classics 372 for description.
Classics 372 Description
History 393
- Ancient History: Rome
See Classics 373 for description.
Classics 373 Description
History 394
- Special Topics in Roman History
See Classics 374 for description.
Classics 374 Description
History 411
- Junior Seminar: East Asian Treaty-Port Communities, 1840-1900
Full course for one semester. Built upon the Sinocentric system of
tribute-trade relations yet formed by post-1840 treaty
negotiations, the treaty ports of China and Japan were critical
nodes in the complex web of political, commercial and cultural
networks that governed multilateral exchange across East Asia in
the nineteenth century. This course will examine the early history
of the communities that emerged in this new environment. Central
topics will include: tribute-trade legacies and
extraterritoriality, community identities, coastal ghettos and
hybrid architecture, business and taxation by proxy, the
import/export of self representations, and the civilizing missions
and reform agendas that were integral to this history. Participants
will discuss recent historiography and employ a broad range of
primary sources as they complete independent research papers.
Conference.
History 412
- Junior Seminar: The Twenties in America
Full course for one semester. The 1920s in the United States--the
so-called Roaring Twenties--were far more complex than most
Americans realize. Students will read historical surveys, academic
case studies, and primary documents that challenge popular
(mis)conceptions of the period from 1919 to 1929. Our survey of
political history will include the rise and role of political
lobbying groups; implementation of the 1924 Immigration Restriction
Act; the birth of the second Ku Klux Klan and the establishment of
the American Civil Liberties Union. The twenties have long been
known as an economically prosperous decade, even as the birthplace
of modern consumer culture. But how did people at the time
understand the economic, political and moral meanings of consumer
behavior? And how much or how little of the new prosperity touched
workers’ lives? We will assess the effects of several key
migrations, of peoples who came to the U.S. (e.g., southern and
eastern European immigrants, and Mexican migrants to California,
the Southwest, and the Midwest) and those who migrated within its
borders (e.g., African Americans who left the South for
North). Changing ideas and practices about sex and gender
roles will also be recurrent topics, and we will examine how
sociologists, anthropologists, and people themselves embraced and
rejected new social roles. We will end the course with sessions
devoted to modern music and the all-important media of film and
radio in the Twenties. Conference.
History 470
- Thesis
Full course for one year.
History 481
- Individual Study
One-half or full course for one semester. Individual study in
fields either more specialized than the regular courses or not
covered by them. Individual reading also may be done in connection
with a regular course for one or two units additional to the
course. Prerequisites: junior or senior standing and approval of
instructor and division.
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