200

This course introduces undergraduate majors and minors to the exercise of thinking, researching and writing historically, focusing on the technical, methodological and theoretical skills that guide professional practice in diverse settings: museums, archives, secondary education and universities. Students will learn how to distinguish between evidence and interpretation and how to assess different kinds of evidence. Class meetings will sample representative fields, approaches and primary sources to provide the foundations for independent research in the capstone course.

Surveys the cultural, political, social and economic developments in this country from the discovery of America through Reconstruction.

Surveys the urbanization and industrialization of the nation and its rise to world power.

European History in the 1900s.

A survey of the history of Native Americans in the Caribbean, North America, and South America from the pre-Columbian period through the twentieth century. By focusing comparatively on the themes of colonialism and resistance over five centuries, students will study the range of tactics that Native Americans have adopted to create and preserve their communities, cultures, and sovereignty since 1492.

A study of the development of slavery and relations between European Americans and African Americans in British, Spanish, and Portuguese America from the beginning of European settlement in the New World until the abolition of slavery in the mid-19th century.

A study of the development of witchcraft accusations, beginning with continental Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries and continuing with the later scares in England and New England. Particular emphasis will be given to international comparisons and to the changing social, cultural and economic positions of women.

A survey of women's accomplishments, lifestyles, changing image and struggle for equality and recognition from colonial times to the present.

Napoleon Bonaparte said: “China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will move the world.” This course will explore how prophetic his words were by exploring China’s often torturous search for modernity. It surveys the interplay between China and the outside world from before the Opium War through the collapse of two millennia of dynastic rule, the rise of the Communist movement, decades of Japanese aggression, the Maoist years of almost constant revolution, and its gradual transition to a socialist-style entrepreneurial state, and its emergence on the world stage as a major power.

A study of Muslims in world history from the 7th to the 21st centuries. This course explores the history of Islamic societies and of Muslims in local and global contexts, including the Middle East, Africa, Central and South Asia, and the West. The course addresses selected topics such as politics and statecraft; religious and cultural traditions and varieties; gender roles; and the challenges and choices that Muslim societies and individuals have faced in classical, early modern, and modern times. Materials include film, fiction and political writing as well as primary historical documents and secondary history textbooks.

The term “discovery” is an ambivalent and charged word when discussing the arrival, military occupation and colonization of the Americas during the late 15th and 16th centuries. Who discovered whom in 1492 and what were the economic, demographic, ecological, political and cultural consequences brought about by the New World/Old World encounter? How were Europe and the Americas transformed by this seminal event, and how were the foundations of modern Latin America (and modern Western civilization) laid during this fascinating period? These questions and many others will be studied and analyzed through exposure to the primary texts and artifacts of that era, in an attempt to understand the Spanish and Indigenous mindset on the eve of conquest and their mutual transformation throughout the 16th century, when a New World — a world still in formation — was born.

An exploration of the history of Africa from the rise of the great Sahel empires to the struggle for independence from European imperialism, with an emphasis on the period from 1500 to 1975. Major topics include the role of Islam, colonialism, nationalist movements, Pan-Africanism, decolonization and the challenges facing newly independent states and societies.

This course surveys Japanese history from the coming of the Western gunboats in the 1850s through the Meiji restoration, the early development of international trade and democracy, the rise of militarism in the 1930s, World War II, the American Occupation, the economic "miracle" and the troubled 2000s.

A study of mid-19th century America, with particular emphases on the political developments, changing regional economies, patterns of interracial, interethnic and interclass relationships, as well as the course of military events during the Civil War.

China is frequently represented as a monolithic civilization, ethnocentric, and static in pre-modern times. This course challenges those stereotypes. It is a descriptive and analytical survey of China’s dynamic history from its historical origins in the 2nd millennium to 1800. It focuses on the evolution of the state, emphasizing cultural and political interactions with both neighboring and more distant societies. It further examines how China’s civilization influenced the emergence of the East Asian family of nations. This is a writing intensive course in which writing is a mode of learning and written assignments are a substantial part of the course grade.

This course examines the history of Japan from its pre-historical origins until the rise of modern Japan in the mid-nineteenth century. Special focus is given to indigenous Japanese beliefs, the influence of Chinese political and social values on Japanese life, Buddhist religious culture, the military ethos of the samurai, and the material cultural and attistic achievements of the Tokugawa period. In addition to a conventional textbook, literature and film are used to immerse students in the worldviews of traditional Japan. Group work and collaborative learning is emphasized. 

This course surveys major trends and turning points in the history of sexuality since 1500. We will examine the governing regimes (legal, religious, medical, etc.) that defined sexual behavior and reproductive practices in mainland North America, paying particular attention to the changing relationship between sexual regulation and politics over time. The course will also explore the ways that official pronouncements differed from the actual practices and perceptions of ordinary woman and men. We will ask how factors such as race and ethnicity, class, and gender shaped sexual understandings and behavior.

A study of Latin American history from the colonial period to the present.

This course covers the persecution and systematic extermination of Jews, Romany, Slavs and other targeted populations of Europe by the Nazis and their collaborators. The course will explore antisemitism in modern European history, the ways in which antisemitism was legalized in Nazi Germany and the consequences of those policies in Nazi-occupied Europe. 

Western civilization traces its intellectual roots to the civilization of Ancient Greece and the extraordinary contribution that it produced in philosophy, drama, and the arts. This course will explore some of the important philosophical texts from Ancient Greece, including the dialogues of Plato (the Last Days of Socrates and The Republic); the dramatic literature found in the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and the arts, with focus on the human body and architecture, in particular, the Parthenon. The class will be structured as a seminar, asking the question: How does Ancient Greece continue to shape our thinking in the 21st century?

The stories of immigration to America by peoples from Asia, Europe and Latin America — whether in history, fiction or film — examine the motives for leaving homeland and family, the experience of newcomers and the process of assimilation into an evolving American culture over time. While the stores have similarities in outline, there are significant cultural differences for each people. This course will examine the immigrant experience of the Chinese, the Jews and the Mexicans, using a major work of history, a novel and three films for each group.

In the 1920s, Paris became the center of an avant garde artistic and cultural community that demonstrated the profound impact of World War I, and has, in turn, shaped art and culture to the present. This course uses period poetry and fiction, memoir, biography and film to evoke the lives and contributions of select iconic figures: poets Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot; writers Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein; painters Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali; composer Igor Stravinsky, dancer Vaslav Nijinsky and producer Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballet Russes; fashion entrepreneur Coco Chanel; and jazz sensation Josephine Baker.

This course focuses on the struggle for racial equality and freedom in the American South after World War II. It also helps students comprehend this struggle within the broader context of post-Civil War American race relations.

Special courses are offered each year.

Drama flourished in Elizabethan London during a sustained period of economic prosperity, including the rise of the professional entertainment industry. While the Elizabethan theatre evolved from medieval public religious traditions, the plays of William Shakespeare demonstrate the pivotal role of the playhouse in the late 16th and early 17th centuries as cultural history, and a window to the world outside London. The course will provide perspective on the historical and cultural context of Elizabethan drama and will explore six of Shakespeare's plays -- both as texts and films -- from his emergence in 1589 through the end of his career in London in 1611.